Public thanks: Miss Gurney

I would like to pay tribute to one of my textiles teachers. Miss Gurney was my teacher for several years when I was doing Textiles and Design at school. She was a great teacher, and taught me a lot about machine sewing, hand sewing and hand embroidery.

Textiles was one of my favourite subjects at school, and was where I was first introduced to Hardanger embroidery (apart from me being very interested in what I saw of it in The Readers Digest Guide to Needlework).

We all had to do a major embroidery project in Year 10. We did a sample of cross stitch, blackwork, shadow embroidery and Hardanger. I LOVED the hardanger, and embarked on a massive project (see right), which I relished every minute of.

Miss Gurney was always an encouragement to me. We also did a smocked baby’s dress in Year 10 (I think!), and I am still grateful to her for teaching me how to do a very gorgeous hand-sewn placket for the back opening.

There was one day that I’m sure Miss Gurney was ruing the day she’d ever met me. I was using one of the overlockers (sergers) in class, and for some reason the threads kept breaking and Miss Gurney had to keep rethreading it. I don’t think I was very popular that day!

So thank you Miss Gurney for being such an inspiration to me. I really enjoyed your classes, and as you can see, I took what you taught me, and absolutely RAN with it! I’m extremely grateful to you.