If the shape you are filling is large enough - try using 2 strands of thread in the first row and changing to one strand in subsequent rows. This enables you to fill the first row closely which is important because you need to have substantial stitches to work back into - but still create a fine (one strand) effect overall. I do this on all my needle painting now; it saves a lot of time.

The next book was Long and Short Stitch Embroidery: A Collection of Flowers, published in 2006. In 2004, we decided to make the move to Cape Town, so along with packing boxes and the new school uniforms came the plans for the next book! I decided to do a book on the technique of long and short stitch. I had begun a master craftsman course with the EGA so that I could teach when we got to South Africa, and it became apparent from my students that people were nervous of long and short stitch, so I resolved to make it plain. The publishers were not keen on text books; they wanted another project book, so I decided to combine the two.

I remembered how frustrated I had felt with the instructions in the books that I had learnt from. They give you the basic outline but left out those vital tidbits like how to achieve a smooth blending or what to do when working a difficult shape, so I spent the next two years researching this technique. I got onto my e-mail and contacted experts from all over the world who were kind enough to pass on their pearls of wisdown.

I tried to put myself in the shoes of someone who would be trying to learn from this book and decided to cover every aspect of long and short stitch from beginning to advanced.

There seemed to be a lot of confusion in the different interpretations, such as silk shading, soft shading, needle painting, etc. The Chinese used the hidden stitch method for hundreds of years, but the Western world has adapted this by splitting the yarn, and this is the commonly used technique today.

Long and short stitch is used to fill a shape with softly blended colours. If you are using it for Jacobean work or decorative surface stitching, it is usually used to shade from, say, pale pink to dark pink, but if you are using it in needle painting for a realistic effect, it is quite different and becomes more like staggered satin stitch.

When I was doing Redoute, I used padding to give a realistic 3-D effect, but I have changed my thoughts on this and now use contrast in color to give the same effect. This is a much simpler and faster way to work.

The first 50 pages of this book [Long and Short Stitch] tells you everything you need to know about the technique with step-by-step guidelines and a troubleshooting section, and then there are 21 projects from beginners to advanced. The paintings for the projects were used with permission from various Botanical artists. The book was reviewed and endorsed by Sally Saunders of the Royal School of Needlework before it was published and is now the text book for my classes.

The last book was Crewel and Surface Embroidery: Inspirational Floral Ideas. When the publishers asked me to come up with another title, I was lost for ideas - I supposed you could say I had writer's block. My long suffering family supported my efforts as I ploughed through books, paintings, and the internet trying to come up with novel ideas.

By now I had joined the Helderberg embroidery guild and became aware of all the wonderful ways that embroidery could be expressed...

Space dyed and variagated threads were becoming very popular, but I was convinced that these could not be used for long and short embroidery... However, I proved myself wrong and found a way of incorporating some of the softly blended space dyed threads into long and short stitch.

I came across some decorative painting pictures of floral sprays by Gretchen Cagel in the US and with her permission based my designs on these. The result was a mix of thread painting and Australian wool embroidery. I combined wools, silks, and cottons together and created semi-realistic floral bouquets. The designs are fun to do and not too taxing!

There are three sections [in the book], one for beginners, intermediate, and advanced. Each section has step by step instructions and lists DMC and Appleton wool alternatives for all the threads used. This book has just been released...

A Bit on Book Publishing: Publishing has advanced dramatically in the last few years and I have had to keep up with these demands by learning computer illustrating and photographic editing. Books have become more visually oriented with enlarged photographic details and computer drawn illustrations that are lifelike. The reader wants fewer words and more pictures. Fortunately, the publishers have a professional who photographs the finished stitching because I am hopeless at taking photographs - I generally chop off people's heads or shoot the background instead!!

Editing: There is a specialist editor who proof reads my work and goes through the project instructions with a fine tooth comb, so I don't need to know how to spell! I do all the stitching and instructions myself and am required to do a minimum of 17 projects for a book. I am given advance payment which covers the cost of my materials. The entire process from start to delivery of the manuscript takes about a year and then another 6 months for editing and printing.

Sales: I have nothing to do with the sales of the book. The publishers distribute the book worldwide through their agents - although we do seem to have some problems in this regard to South Africa. If an author is lucky enough to go into a reprint in the first three months, it is considered to be selling well and there is always a chance that it could be translated into other languages, in which case the book exceeds its estimated print life. My last book was translated into Russian and Polish (not the upper scale of the market, but nevertheless....)

Royalties: I get a token royalty on each book that is sold. It is hard work and the returns are modest: it certainly doesn't pay the bills, but there is something to be said for seeing all that hard work in print and knowing that what you set out to do has been achieved and will hopefully benefit others.

I would like to conclude by saying that books are a wonderful way of sharing your knowledge with others. We need to keep hand embroidery alive, and if we can't share our ideas, if we hug them to ourselves, then they become lost and are worthless in the future.

If I give you a present, then I no longer have the gift - you do. But if I give you an idea, then we both have it - and if you give it to someone else and they share it with others, we have multiplied that idea.

If any of you have an idea to share, consider writing a book - you never know where it might lead you!

It all started in about 1990 when I was living in Zimbabwe. My introduction to embroidery came from humble beginnings..... I did not learn at my grandmother's knee, I did not learn from my Mother (she is here today and will confirm), I did not do domestic science at school; in fact, everything I learnt was from a book - however, I did enjoy art, so perhaps the creative leanings were there. It was not until I got married that I tried my hand at various crafts including sewing - this began a series of home industries where I sold my wares at craft fairs hoping to get rich quick from the proceeds. Then I learnt to do cross stitch and was hooked.

In 1993, an opportunity arose to take on the DMC agency in Zimbabwe which would prove to change the course of my life. This little agency was a great success and eventually we were providing every needlework shop in Zimbabwe plus some of the neighboring countries.

We imported the threads direct from France and then distributed them to the shops. There was a chronic shortage of foreign currency in Zimbabwe so I had to borrow from my Dad's currency allocation for the farm. If I remember correctly, we had to put the threads down as tractor spares or tobacco twines or something like that!

At this time, I became interested in thread painting and spent many hours pondering the techniques in books and trying them out on little pieces of scrap fabric. I would copy little pictures from cards, books, or wrapping paper in an effort to reproduce the original as closely as possible. I was not aware of any embroidery guild in Zimbabwe and certainly did not know of anyone who did this type of embroidery who could help me, so I just developed my own style of thread painting.

In 1999, we went on a trip to the DMC factory in France. They saw some of my work and asked me if I would like to publish a book for them, but when the contract came through, I noticed it was to be published in French.

So I sent the synopsis out to some English speaking publishers and in 2000 I was offered a contract by Sally Milner Publishing in Australia. Their contract stated that I had to give them first offer of any new book titles and so I have continued to publish with them to this day.

Since then, I have published four books, approximately one every two years - three on thread painting and one on cross stitch. The cross stitch book was compiled from a number of kits I had done previously and was published in 2003.

The first [thread painting] book was Redoute's Finest Flowers in Embroidery, published in 2001 - I had bought a book in the London art gallery on Redoute's flower paintings and felt compelled to stitch them. I thought it was my job to send them a complete layout of the book, page for page. Computers didn't do what you wanted them to do in those days and I spent many frustrated hours trying to get pictures in the right place on the page, only to be told that was the designer's job!

I found out I was pregnant at the age of 43 (I have two grown up daughters) and... moved out of our house into a small cottage while they were doing major alterations to our house - didn't think I would finish the book. My family pushed me to get it finished and about four months before Katie was born, the book went off to Australia.

I remember well the arrival of this first book. Katie was about 2 months old and I had tears in my eyes. When I saw the book in print, it was an amazing feeling.

This little book exceeded all my expectations, going into a reprint within the first three months - I didn't even know what a reprint was... since then, it's been reprinted four times. The whole thing was a bit overwhelming: not only was I trying to get to grips with motherhood in my latter years, but the publishers were already asking for a second title.