I was asked by The Embroiderers’ Guild if I would volunteer my services and help them run a small series of events they were keen to try out.

They have been running online events where a specific textile artist or embroidery artist does a talk via Zoom. The usual sort of thing. A talk about their work, or some interesting aspect of their research or experiences. They have called that series Thread Talks and they have been very interesting & enjoyable. In fact, coming up soon is one by my good friend Alison Larkin. You might know that Alison was my number one ‘guinea pig’ guest for Stitchery Stories back in summer 2017!

The Guild trustees also wanted to try running a series of ‘conversations’ and, inspired by my Stitchery Stories episodes, wondered if I would act as host for the series to be called ‘Talking Threads’.

So we’ve got 3 planned out, each with a different theme, to be held in January 2022, February & March.

The first is 20th January where the theme is textile arts in education and features 2 former holders of the ‘Beryl Dean Award For Teaching Excellence, which is awarded annually by the Board of Trustees of The Embroiderers’ Guild. I will be chatting with Karen Nichol and Hannah Maughan.

I’m looking forward to doing this, and yes, it will be a stretch out of the good old comfort zone won’t it? I pre-record Stitchery Stories and have the comfort of being able to edit as I require, and it’s audio only, and usually only 1 guest. For this series, it’s live and uncut! Via Zoom, with our cameras switched on, and I’ve got 2 guests to keep the conversation flowing with.

I suppose the nearest I have done to this was back in November 2019 when I did an episode of Stitchery Stories LIVE with an AUDIENCE at a podcasting festival, The Podcast Social Club event. My brave guests for that event were Mary-Ann Toop (Concordias World) and CarolAnn J Allan. If you are interested in those episodes (there were 2) you can listen here:

https://stitcherystories.com/podcastsocialclubpartone/

https://stitcherystories.com/podcastsocialclubparttwo/

So with that being said, here is the link to discover more about Talking Threads.

https://embroiderersguild.com/talking-threads/

Right… I’m off to do some prep and discover more about my guests, and go through the questions I will use as a guide and a starting point to our conversation.

Cheers! Sue xxx