Leicester Ruth's Prize Winning Designs

A Leicester textile designer has won a top prize at a contemporary craft exhibition. Ruth Singer, whose business is based at Leicester's Phoenix Square, was selected as one of the winners of the Contemporary Craft Exhibition at Unit Twelve Staffordshire by industry experts.

Ruth had two of her textile designs selected for the show and won £100 in prize money.

Ruth Singer (Photo by Dominic harris, source: www.ruthsinger.com)

Ruth Singer creates one-off textile artworks inspired by historical textiles, museum objects, personal heritage, memory and stories. Ruth uses hand-stitched construction techniques such as pleating, gathering, applique and structured stuffing to create dense surface texture and she explores layers, scale, proportion, structure and repetition using hand-cut, stitched and assembled elements. Many of her techniques are developed from the study of historical textiles, based on her own research and first career in museums.

Visit Ruth's website at: http://www.ruthsinger.com

New Business Directory

We've added an Independent Leicester Business directory to this website - see the tab at the top of the page. If you're a consumer wanting to buy local, browse the companies who have signed up so far. If you're a business, it is free to join. Simply email your company name, website, contact details and a blurb to independentleicester@gmail.com.

We want to give Leicestershire a directory that focuses solely on local companies!

Welcome to Independent Leicester!

You may be following us on Twitter, you may even like us on Facebook, but today we enter the blogosphere - yes that is a made up word by yours truly! Independent Leicester is an organisation to help independent businesses in Leicester and Leicestershire through these difficult financial times. We started off as a simple retweeter. If you had a message that you wanted us to tweet to our growing number of followers, you could have sent us an @-message and we would gladly retweeted it. This service continues and if you want our help, simply follow us at http://www.twitter.com/iLeicester.

Leicester Lanes - independent shopping in the city

We have to be honest, we haven't put as much effort into Facebook but this is your tool as well as mine. Use our wall to write your message or email us some words and a picture at independentleicester@gmail.com and we will post it for you! We are here for you, so why not like our page at http://www.facebook.com/independentleicester.

This blog is also created to support you. I will do all I can to find the news that is relevant to you and post helpful tips, such as social media marketing, so you can all benefit. I even welcome guest posts. Simply email me at independentleicester@gmail.com with your words and pictures and I will post it on the blog - obviously you must be an independent in the Leicestershire region. It can simply be a profile of your company or something you wish to share to help others - anything! Email me and we will help you.

Finally, we are looking at producing our first Independent Leicester magazine - a quarterly publication about independent life, promoting independent businesses, aimed at the consumer. For the magazine to work - we need you. If you are willing to commit to an advertising plan, we will offer you some fantastic exposure. The magazine will be free for the public and have a print run of 10,000 copies with hundreds of outlets - so why not get involved? If you're interested and would like to see a rate card, email us at the above address.