Bath Textile Summer School
Bath Textile Summer School
x days: xxxx or x days: xxx
Creative workshops in the heart of an historic city
11th-22nd August 2025
Creative workshops in the heart of an historic city
Bath Textile Summer School 2025
Jenny Dixon Organiser
Lynne Roche Founder & Creative Consultant
Class costs
Welcome to our new programme of workshops for August 2025. We hope you find the selection as exciting and inspiring as we do!
We have invited favourite tutors to visit again – and added new faces ready to offer you something that little bit different. We hope you will join us for a creative and inspiring break in our beautiful city.
Jenny & Lynne
2-day class £250, 3-day class £375, 4-day class £495.
Our classrooms
All classes will be held in the light-filled rooms of the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute (BRLSI) in the centre of the city in Queen’s Square, BA1 2HN. (Shown above right)
Parking is a 5-minute walk away.
Summer School hours
You’ll have a 10am start each day. Classes end around 4.30-5pm each day
What to bring
Where a tutor offers a specific kit, you will find details and costs along with their class description and on our website. You will be sent a separate list of general materials to bring when you pay your balance.
Waiting lists
We keep our classes small, so places fill up fast. When a class is fully booked, we can add you to a waiting list. Please make sure you provide a daytime phone number.
Summer School 2025
Class kit
Bath
For Jenny’s class you will need to purchase a kit, which contains everything you need, plus fully illustrated instruction manual. The cost is £220. The optional needlebook kit is £18.00.
Jenny Adin-Christie
17th Century Style Purses –The Samode Purse
4 days: 11th-12th, 14th-15th August 2025
In this workshop you will learn to create the embroidered front panel which will form the front of a small purse (panel measures 10.5cm x 8cm). The form of the purse is based on a 17th century piece in Jenny’s collection, with stiffened front and back panels and a gathered ‘bellows’ style interior, closing with a drawstring.
You will be able to choose from two designs, The Samode Purse or The Lady Evelyn Purse (shown on the nextpage). Both will be taught at the same four-day class.
What students will achieve
This is a richly coloured design incorporating silk and metal thread techniques, worked on a ground of duchess satin. This design is based on two areas of inspiration reflecting mosaics – the bejewelled interior of the Samode Palace in Jaipur, India, and the floral mosaics of Gaudi in Barcelona.
The front panel design depicts a central rose worked in fettuccini ribbon and silk gimp, surrounded by a yellow and silver cartouche of pleating and couching with pearls and spangles.
The bag is finished with a tassel worked using a 17th century form of warp wrapping, over a wooden form.
Summer School 2025
Jenny Adin-Christie
17th Century Style Purses –The Lady Evelyn Purse
4 days: 11th-12th, 14th-15th August 2025
This delicate design is inspired by the work of Lady Evelyn Stewart Murray (1868–1940). This little purse echoes her love of fine whitework. (Please read her story on our website.)
The design incorporates delicate cutwork, inspired by the British Arms, net darning, padded satin stitch, ladder stitch, and beaded eyelets, with beads and crystals. The bag is finished with a tassel worked in needlelace and beads over a wooden form.
What students will achieve
We will concentrate on the embroidery of the front panel of the bag and making the cord and tassel. You are unlikely to finish in class but we will cover the required techniques, and you will receive comprehensive instruction and video access to allow you to complete confidently at home.
Bath
Class kit
For this class you will need to purchase a project kit costing £220. An optional needlebook kits is available for £18. The silver-plated flower press with blotting paper pages costs £148.
Bath Textile Summer School 2025
Caroline Zoob Inspired by Fraktur
2 days: 11th-12th August 2025
We are delighted to welcome Caroline back for a brand new class. This time she will be exploring the secrets of a little known folk art tradition.
An archaic Gothic or ‘black-letter’ typeface gave its name to a beloved form of early American folk art, rich in inspiration for the embroiderer.
Many of the motifs will be familiar to quilters – tulips, pairs of confronting birds, trails of leaves and flowers and people –all with graphic ‘stitch’ directions in the painting of the petals, feathers, details of dress. Borders play an important part, many with intricate patterns.
What students will achieve
Using antique fabrics, fabric paint and, most of all, stitch, you will create an heirloom piece of fraktur-inspired textile. It might be something to commemorate a family occasion, or simply a beautiful image to frame.
Caroline will have extensive references and examples, and all materials will be provided.
Summer School 2025
Caroline Zoob
Bloomsbury Flowers
2 days: 14th-15th August 2025
Charleston Farmhouse, the country home of the Bloomsbury Group and its wealth of artwork decorating every surface, is the inspiration behind this new class from Caroline. Many of you will know her as a pioneer of the possibilities of painting on linen as a ground for hand embroidery.
Caroline also has a rather personal Bloomsbury connection as she lived with her husband, Jonathan, at Monk’s House for over a decade as tenants of the National Trust. Monk’s House in Sussex is the former home of Leonard and Virginia Woolf. (Caroline’s book Virginia Woolf’s Garden: The Story of the Garden at Monk’s House comes highly recommended with embroidered maps of the garden prefacing each chapter.)
What students will achieve
Inspired by the paintings of Vanessa Bell, you will work with paint and stitch to create your own images of Bloomsbury flowers. You do not need to have any painting skills, although it would be best if you have confident hand-embroidery skills.
Bath
It is expected that only the first morning of the workshop will use paint, and after that we will be exploring ways in which too add stitch, using exciting new decorative stitches to create stylised flowers and decorative details such as those Vanessa Bell used to decorate the surfaces of Charleston Farmhouse. All materials will be included.
(Top right)
Chris Pearsall (Top left) Elizabeth Whiting & Associates / Alamy Stock Photo
Bath Textile Summer School 2025
Class Materials
Dinny will provide the wool and the required felting tools for you to use in class for a small additional fee.
Dinny Pocock
Needle-felted Bobbin Bird
2 days: 11th-12th August 2025
Needle-felting is a wonderful ‘kitchen table’ art form – once you’ve learned the skill, it can be done almost anywhere and with very few tools. I so enjoy running workshops; guiding small groups through the process of creating a neat bird from wisps of wool fibres. I’m happy to tutor beginners and more experienced needle-felters alike – indeed, many really lovely pieces have been made by beginners on my workshops. Over the course of this two day workshop, there will be plenty of opportunity for me to give each student individual attention and encouragement as needed.
What students will achieve
We’ll start the workshop by needle-felting a simple practice piece to get some skills in hand, then move on to needle-felt a sculptural bird over a simple wire armature, building shape and adding colour with muted un-dyed wools, and with dyed merino. The kind of bird you choose to create is entirely up to you – perhaps a wren, an Indian Runner Duck, a magpie or a robin – any species at all! If you are new to needle-felting, then a plain coloured bird is easiest, but a more complex bird is certainly doable if you’d rather.
The finished piece can be mounted on the vintage cotton reel provided, but you’re welcome to bring an alternative ‘plinth’. I describe my work as being made with wool and a touch of humour, and like to pair my needle-felt animals with vintage objects, which often brings an unexpected narrative.
Summer School 2025
Class Materials
Dinny will provide the wool and the required felting tools for you to use in class for a small additional fee.
Dinny Pocock
Bear Needle-felt Workshop
3 days: 13th-15th August 2025
We’ll start the workshop by needle-felting a simple practice piece – a colourful toadstool – during which you’ll learn techniques to work wool into three-dimensional shapes, add colour, join pieces, and how coarse and fine fibres behave differently.
What students will achieve We’ll then move on to needle-felt a sculptural bear over a simple wire armature, building shape and adding colour with muted un-dyed wools, and with dyed merino. The method I teach will show you a more organic process than typically practiced, and one where the wool is allowed to find its own place, creating a sculpture with wool.
The kind of bear you choose to create is entirely up you –perhaps a grizzly, a black bear, or a fine polar bear. If you are new to needle-felting then a polar bear is likely to be more straightforward as you can concentrate on the sculptural aspects rather than colour and shading, but a more complex bear is certainly doable if that’s where your inclination lies.
The finished piece can be free-standing, but you’re very welcome to bring a ‘plinth’ for your bear if you wish. Maybe you have a particular item such as an old carpentry or kitchen tool, a book, or small box you’d like to use? I describe my work as being made with wool and a touch of humour, and like to pair my needle-felt animals with vintage objects, which often brings an unexpected narrative.
Class Materials
Corinne will provide dress net, flax fibre, linen thread pva, water-based varnish and fabric crayons for a small additional fee payable in class.
Corinne Young 3D Flower Making Using Flax Fibre Paper
4 days: 18th-19th, 21st-22nd August 2025
Corinne is an award-winning textile artist based in North Lancashire, UK. She creates three-dimensional embroidered heirloom artwork. Her stitched plant sculptures are inspired by botanical specimens, plant meanings, and historical artefacts. Her work is in private collections all over the world.
What students will achieve In this workshop, Corinne will firstly teach you how to make the beautiful flax fibre paper that she uses in her work. You will then go on to learn how to study your floral inspiration, make templates and make 3D embroidered flowers using hand or machine embroidery; incorporating stumpwork methods.
The completed flowers can be put onto stems to display in a vase, or can be used to decorate hats and head-dresses or other accessories. Some basic hand sewing or freehand machine embroidery experience would be useful.
Bath Textile Summer School 2025
Class kit
Ali will provide the woollen blanket background, printed text and a collection of vintage fabrics as well as a gorgeous collection of vintage-style fabrics by French General for you to choose from. Everything you need will be available for the small charge of £15.00.
Ali Ferguson
Stories from the Sewing Box –Cloth Collage
2 days: 18th-19th August 2025
In this workshop you’ll spend two lovely days of nostalgia, sharing stories and relaxed hand-stitching inspired by memories of sewing, old haberdashery items and school sewing notes.
Ali will share stories behind some of her own cloth collages and then gently lead you through her making process of gathering and playing with materials and then using words, motifs and simple hand stitching to create work that is personal and has story at its heart.
What students will achieve
Using an old woollen blanket as a background, you will create a gorgeous ‘Cloth Collage’ from materials old and new. Ali will raid her studio to provide a delicious selection of materials for you to choose from – vintage cottons, old table linens, patchwork quilt pieces, old dressmaking patterns and vintage haberdashery as well as fabric printed with handwritten text from old school sewing notes.
Ali will share her relaxed approach to creating a gorgeously scrappy collage where fabrics are ripped and layered, printed words are highlighted, and personal words are hand stitched. She’ll show you how to add simple stitched motifs – all adding to your ‘sewing’ story. Time is given to every part of the process, from choosing the materials, to laying out your design, slowly & deliberately – this takes so much longer than you think and may even take most of the first day!
You’ll then start the lovely process of slow hand stitching. Don’t worry if you’re not an experienced stitcher, Ali will share her favourite stitches and processes. Suitable for all abilities.
Bath Textile Summer School 2023
Class kit
A great selection of old and used materials will be provided for you to choose from as well as a lovely collection of vintage-style fabrics designed by French General. Everything you need will be available for the small charge of £15.00.
Ali Ferguson
Wonky Patchwork Portraits
2 days: 21st-22nd August 2025
Join Ali Ferguson for two lovely days creating personal wonky patchwork portraits inspired by courthouse steps blocks, stories and memories of special people and handwritten words.
Ali will show you how she creates her deliciously wonky patchwork and how she adds to the story element with the use of meaningful words. These pieces are all hand stitched but don’t worry if you’re not experienced – Ali will share some of her favourite stitches and plenty of inspiration.
What students will achieve
You’ll be working with a fabulous selection of vintage and used materials such as vintage cottons, old table linens, old quilt pieces, shirting fabric and old handkerchiefs. By using old and used materials, you are bringing their stories to the piece too! Your finished piece will be approximately A4 in size.
You can work on one or two pieces during the workshop, but you won’t finish them – hand stitching is slow! However, you will leave with a gorgeous project and all the ideas that you need to continue at home.
Ali passionately believes that ‘slow stitching’ should be exactly that, something that can be added to, day by day, picked up and put down thus weaving a little bit of your own everyday story into your piece. If you love stitching, then you’ll love this approach where the pleasure of creating is as significant as the desire to have a finished project. Suitable for all abilities.
Bath Textile Summer School 2025
Anne Kelly
Family & Friends Casket Project
4 days: 18th-19th, 21st-22nd August 2025
A ‘casket’ was a Elizabethan box or repository for games and other objects, decorated with scenes of people and everyday life. In this four-day exclusive and new course with artist, author and tutor Anne Kelly, you will learn how to bring this tradition up to date by designing and creating a covering for a display box or case.
What students will achieve
You will source a small sturdy box or suitcase in heavy card, leather or thin wood, to use in the course. The making of the covering for the box is fluid and adaptable and we will be able to see how the decorative elements work before committing them to the surface. This is a fun process where you can be inspired by samples of work from Anne and bounce ideas off the other members of the group.
Using a range of simple and adaptable techniques taken from her books, and working in a supportive and encouraging environment, you will design a pattern unique to your piece. Layers of textile collage and stitching will create your pieces which will then be attached to your chosen item.
Ideally you will finish the box or case in the four days of the course but you may wish to continue to add to your piece at home.
