Knit and Stitch Shows

This Autumn I am lucky enough to have pieces selected for exhibiting in the HUE and NEG textile galleries at Knit and Stitch in Alexandra Palace and Harrogate.

In HUE our starting point was Robert Macfarlane's book 'The Old Ways - A Journey on Foot' along the ancient tracks, holloways, drove roads and sea paths that crisscross the British landscape and its waters.  My starting point was the ancient route across West Penwith that linked the Hayle estuary and Marazion saving the dangerous sea route around Lands End.  Much of my work involves paper laminations of my photographs which allows the fragility of the ever changing patterns of the sea and sand at the entrance to the Hayle estuary from the seato be reflected.

Detail from Shore Visions

My work selected for the New Embroidery Group textile gallery is more varied but most of the pieces still include paper laminations but in a variety of ways.  Be What You Are and City Skyline use text to create different patterns.  The text reads "Do not try to be anything but what you are and try and be that perfectly' although writing it with a piece of slate and without spaces between words or lines means it is difficult to read.

Detail from Be What You Are

City Skyline

Depths of Time reflects the chaos of different sand patterns created by the retreating sea.  This piece uses acrylic, distressed lutrador and paper lamination.

By contrast Random Confusion to Final Order has no paper lamination but relies on random effect of different acrylic pieces on cloth together with hand stitch.

Well I hope I will see some of you at Knit and Stitch, I am there parts of Thursday, Friday and Saturday and will try.  Maybe my blogs will be more frequent in the future.

The Contemporary Textile fair may be of interest

Update since my original blog

Once again it is a very long time since I updated my blog.  This does not mean I have been doing nothing, in fact I have been busy with textiles and exhibitions but I won't cover them all only the more recent ones.

In September 2021 I was part of the team that organised a two week exhibition at Denbies Vineyard, Dorking for the NEG.  This was a curated exhibition and I was pleased to have two pieces selected.  They were new works.  Roots without Branches is a breakdown print which was quilted by machine and hand stitched.  Unlike most of my work, it is not based on the sea shore and did to use blue.

 Roots without Branches                    

I returned to my normal tones with a blue and terracotta piece that was created from a mono print off glassine (a very shining surface that breaks up applied dye).  It is mainly heavily hand stitched with some machine stitching.  Shallow Waters was the result

 

Shallow Waters + detail

At that exhibition we had a President's Challenge, which involved flowers my piece was a digital print of an image I had created from my work on line.  It was machine quilted with raw edge appliqué tulips and some hand stitch.

Floating Tulips

Fairly recently I joined the Quilters Guild and the linked Contemporary Quilters, not a medium I explore very often.  I decided to enter the Contemporary Quilters' Autumn Challenge which was a quilt that could be viewed from both sides that was to be 30cm wide at the top and 150cm long.  Much of my textile art is created from paper laminations from my photographs.  I put together a patchwork of my photographs of footprints and sand patterns in the sand between the tides that gets washed away twice a day.  I made two long paper laminations of these images to create Between Tides.  Any joints were raw edged.  In places between the two laminations there are fine lien pieces again paper laminated with the sand patterns.  The piece was machine quilted and hand stitched.  I was amazed and delighted when this won the Ann Tuck prize which I am happily spending on courses to increase my knowledge of quilting techniques.

  

 Between Tides - front and back

I am now into 2022 when the Worshipful Company of Broderers invited people to submit work for an exhibition entitled 'The Art of Embroidery'.  This exhibition was at the Bankside Gallery.  My piece Underfoot was one of the nearly 150 pieces selected.  It is a paper lamination of the pebbles under my feet as I take a regular walk along an estuary to a beach on St Ives Bay.  The work was machine and hand stitched with some pebbles highlighted with darning.  

 Underfoot

This year I was also able to exhibit at Ramster, a lovely historic house with a wonderful garden.  It was soon after the gales had swept through in the Spring and the loss of trees was very evident.  It was a very interesting exhibition with a wide variety of work but is only held biannually.

I recently put quilts into Region 2 of the Quilters Guild exhibition, both in their main quilt show and their challenge and also exhibited as part of a group of four who make up Fabricata.  The challenge was to create a quilt using two different fabrics 16 inches wide and up to 40 inches deep.  I have recently felt that my stash of fabrics that I have dyed and/or printed was getting too big and I needed to make use of them before buying or making more.  I chose a finely woven cotton that had a breakdown print and was over printed with a shell image and a very loose weave cotton dust sheet which I had used for breakdown printing.  The latter is easy for hand sewing but stretched and moved under any form of machining whether or not with a walking foot.  So a patchwork of images were joined and hand or machine quilted to create the following piece (yet again it is blue tones).  I was going to call it Round and Round but then decided Caught in the Net was more appropriate.

 Caught in the Net

This is all my of current update but another will following very shortly regarding the exhibition Letchworth about which I am very excited.

Well it is a very long time since I added anything to my blog.  I have been productive during that time in broadening my range of work through attending courses and ways of interpreting images.  I can perhaps go back to why I started on my textile journey.  

My contribution to craft started with my creations of birthday, thank you and holiday cards for family and friends while doing my C&G Diploma in Textiles (Embroidery).  My enjoyment and successful creations have driven me to push my work further.  My love for the countryside and coastline has inspired me to create pieces of work which showcase a variety of colours, textures and images bringing the textile work to life.  I have displayed a number of my textile pieces in exhibitions around England, including Ramster, Chichister and Berkhampstead. I have participated in creative working groups, both local and national, to share my expertise and train other enthusiasts such as myself generally focusing on paper lamination.






For my work, I take inspiration from everything around me and from all over the world, from New York City to Australia, from coastlines to skylines, reflections to unique spaces.   This piece is entitled “Down Under”.  It is a wall hanging that was created by using dyed fabric and colour catchers, paper laminations and print with hand and machine stitching.  The piece draws together the variety of materials and truly reflects the open space of Western Australia, whilst also subtlety highlighting the diverse nature and countryside that can be found there together with the unique plants from Fitzgerald National Park.













I have been interested in rust and its effect on fabric and paper.  I used rusty nails to inspire "Nailed it" which combined threads, paper on net, threads and rust dyed fabrics with hand stitch.

A course with Alice Fox extended my interest and resulted in a couple of pieces based on "Countryside Findings"

An interest in using text as the basis for a design led me to produce work based on text by Francis de Sales text 'Do not wish to be anything but what you are and try and be that perfectly'.   This led to a series of paper lamination pieces with print and stitch. This was one of my earlier large pieces of work but still retains a freshness.