DIY City Blog

 Kim Thitichai

I came across The Textile Directory about 2 years ago now, when I was starting my own business and have always thought it to be a wonderful resource site for DIYer’s in the UK and even those abroad. I interviewed Sara Drinkwater, Editor of The Textile Directory on-line to help fill us in on what the directory is all about. 

Sara Millis: What is The Textile Directory and how did you get started?

Sara Drinkwater: The Textile Directory is an interactive textile community for everybody with an interest in textile art, craft, fashion and interiors. The website includes a fully searchable directory of textile artists, suppliers, exhibition organisers, courses and a range of other textile-related companies; latest book reviews; local, national and international events; a bookstore and much more. The directory was originally set up in 2002 by Sue Richardson and for 6 years was published in book form. Sue was hoping to set up a company offering fabulous weekend breaks with well-known textile artists in luxury country house hotels. While doing her research for the business plan for Creative Escapes, Sue started to look for resources such as suppliers interested in sponsoring the weekends, artists to teach on the courses, colleges at which textile students might be interested in the opportunity, etc. It was in the early days of the internet and there appeared to be no printed resources of any kind. So, having spoken to various textile people that she knew, Sue decided to put one together. The first Textile Directory was published in October 2001 and consisted of 60 pages. It was initially focused on providing people with information about educational opportunities, so most of the suppliers listed were people offering courses or evening classes. It was sold for £5 at the Knitting & Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, London and was a huge success. As soon as it came out people started sending us information about contacts we’d missed and it grew from there. In 2002 the book was more than double the size of the first one and in 2003 we launched the website. As more and more people wanted to be included we realised that soon it would become like the telephone directory! We also learned from a major customer survey we did that the web version was more useful and easy to search than a book could ever be. So we decided to put all our efforts and resources into developing The Textile Directory online and since that time the running of the directory has been my responsibility.

 Sue Allen

Sara Millis: What are the key features of your resource site?

Sara Drinkwater: The searchable directory is the key feature of the site, where people can find the contact details for the people they are looking for, whether this be to commission an artist to do a piece of work or to buy supplies for their latest project. We also have lots of other features on the website including book reviews, diary dates and our book shop, which sells hundreds of specialist textile titles. We also have a range of options for artists to showcase their work, which is proving very successful. We are incorporating new features into the site all the time, with our latest development being project pages that will hopefully go live in the next couple of months. Our plan is to feature a different project for our visitors each month so that they can try out new skills. We have also very recently launched an open competition, where people are invited to design a textile or fashion piece based on the theme of magic. We have a fantastic prize of £1000 to spend on Pfaff products for the overall winner and will also be holding an exhibition of the 30 best entries in the early part of next year, so everyone here is really excited by that.  

Sara Millis: Yes, I noticed that you have just launched a bookstore… Can you tell me a bit more about that?  

Sara Drinkwater: As well as publishing The Textile Directory for 6 years we also help other authors to publish their own books through our publishing company Word4Word. Many of the titles we publish are textile related and we decided that the website gave us a fantastic opportunity to sell our authors books. The next logical step was to invite other textile publishers and independent authors to list their books too. Everyone we invited chose to join us and we have now developed one of the biggest stores for buying specialist publications on the internet. We launched in November and now have more than 700 titles, with more being added every day.  

Susan Cutts

Sara Millis: What is next for the Textile Directory? 

Sara Drinkwater: Going forward we would love to see The Textile Directory really embrace the new social networking culture of the internet, which has massive potential. The textile world has a fantastic community and our vision is to make the website a central place for artists, hobbyists, suppliers, teachers, gallery owners and anyone with an interest in this fascinating art form to meet and support each other as they move their careers and businesses forward. 

The Textile Directory can be found on-line at www.thetextiledirectory.com 

 by: Sara Millis