I can’t believe another year has passed, and 2025 was a very busy year for me! I really like to do a blog post at the end of the year to reflect on the things I’ve achieved and help me decide where my focus should be in the year ahead. 2025 was the year of exhibitions for me. I had my work in five different exhibitions, including one in Milan, one I was involved in organising with my fellow Morley alumni, and one where I won a prize!
The Broderer’s exhibition was the highlight of my year. I was pleased to just get into the exhibition at all, but then to find out I was shortlisted for the Viewer’s Choice award and then actually win it was amazing. I enjoyed doing the show with my Morley friends, it was so great to see how everyone’s work has progressed since we all left the college. Taking part in the Foodie exhibition in Milan was very exciting. It was lovely to be invited to join an exhibition celebrating food in craft and then to be able to fly out to see the exhibition was so much fun.
In terms of creating work in 2025, I made some smaller pieces for the Morley exhibition, but three larger pieces dominated the year for me; the pepperoni pizza with its gravity-defying slice, the sushi, and the bag of pick’n’mix sweets. The pizza and the sweets in particular were time consuming projects. The pizza was a large project with a lot of area to sew and the challenge of the slice was good fun to figure out. The sweets were difficult in a different way – there were a lot of very small components, and sewing at such a small scale was more of a challenge for me, especially when it came to construction.
I ended the year on a high note with these three major projects being featured as part of an artist profile all about me in Embroidery magazine. It was included in the Jan/Feb 2026 issue which came out on Christmas Eve and was a very lovely Christmas present for me!
I only did one course during London Craft Week this year, Couture Micro-Beading, which was very enjoyable, and I also took part in several events that took place during London Textile Month in September. I visited an embroidery exhibition, attended a talk and tour at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and did two workshops one in appliqué and one in fabric manipulation. I will definitely be checking the calendars for these two events in 2026 for more workshops I can attend to expand my skill set.
Lastly this year I did a talk about my work to the Romford Embroiderers group in November. I was a little bit nervous beforehand as I don’t do much public speaking but they made me feel very welcome and I had a lovely afternoon with them. I’m booked in to do another talk next year with the Basingstoke group and I’m very much looking forward to it.
One of my goals in 2025 was to revamp my website to include a gallery for my work alongside my blog so I hope you are enjoying the website now as you read this post! I received a lovely new wall planner for Christmas so I’m looking forward to having a big planning session in the next couple of days to set myself up for the new year. Here’s to a productive and peaceful 2026!