I have just enjoyed a few days in Lancashire, giving talks about my work and teaching workshops to two groups based in the Leyland area – ‘Bent Needles’ and ‘Priory Patches’. I had a lovely time and got some wonderful feedback. The talk I gave to ‘Priory Patchers’ was held in a lovely community hall in the attractive village of Hutton. It was well attended and the vote of thanks at the end was lovely – thank you!. There was a lot of interest in my work, which is always rewarding – especially when everyone there knew just how much time and effort goes into making a quilt or hanging.   The workshop the following day was ‘Notan’. We were in a lovely red brick building, Worden Arts Centre, which is in the centre of Worden Park, the largest park within the borough of South Ribble: so we spent the day surrounded by beautiful parkland, gardens and lovely old buildings. The birdsong was beautiful and accompanied our work throughout the day. What a wonderful environment in which to be creative. It would be a lovely place to spend a longer time, drawing outside, then taking the results into the studio to develop into textiles.   I thoroughly enjoyed working with this delightful group, they were so keen I could hardly stop them working long enough to have lunch. I would like to thank one member for bringing me a lovely lunch – it was very much appreciated!   Notan is based on a Japanese system of light/dark contrast and adapts very well to textile work. It’s basically a straight forward system but can get a little tricky at times, working out which pieces go where – it’s a little like a jigsaw without a picture – but fun to play with. There were some stunning results and I hope I get to see photos of some of these pieces when they are quilted and finished.     Don’t forget to push the technique to see where it takes you! With ‘Bent Needles’ I did a Fabric Bowls workshop in comfortable, homely surroundings at Wrights Fold. I hope they take the techniques I taught them and develop them into new ideas. I’m sure one of the class members, who is studying City and Guilds, will have fun playing creatively with the concept for the three-dimensional component of her course. I’d love to see the results. I always enjoy meeting and working with new people.       Best wishes to everyone. Dorothy 11th May 2012