Dear Members,
During the summer the CTDG has been busy. First we had a successful Weekend Workshop at Culford, all the courses packed as much as possible into the time and everyone went home bursting with new ideas. After a lot of investigation Derek Edwards has found a secure payment method to include on our website so we can now have a shopping cart on the order form, all explained in the magazine.
I hope that many members saw the Insight article about the CTDG in the July issue of Stitch magazine. Many thanks go to the Editor, Kathy Troup, for writing about us so positively. The response has been very good with about ten new members and increased sales of the Workbooks, if you have the magazine please take it about with you and show it to other textile enthusiasts.
Showing our aim of how to interpret computer design the articles in this issue should encourage you to spend time being creative. Marie Roper and Penny Usher are avid machine embroiderers each with lots of experience and ideas and, as Sarah Brownie's group at Culford discovered, her ideas for drawing are inspirational. The challenge then is to photograph or scan it into your computer and send your piece into Derek to put onto the Web Gallery - no work - no Gallery
If you do not have a graphics program or yours is elderly do not be nervous of loading and using Gimp, a free program reviewed by Jan Hay. I have loaded and successfully used the program on both my Mac and PC computers.
If you haven't been to a CTDG Weekend think about coming in 2005, 1-3 April, at Queenswood School near Hatfield. Plans so far are detailed in the magazine, please note carefully the information about the accommodation.
Best wishes
Hazel
(an extract from - Issue 51)