Category: writing
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A Reflection on Patch Work
Book by Claire Wilcox, our September read for Textile Book Group! I wrote and shared this in December 2024 but I am sharing it again as we will be reading this book for my online Textile Book Group on 28th September 2026. Book group is approximately monthly and runs 6-7pm on Monday evenings. All welcome.…
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How I accidentally became a writer
And how self-publishing has shaped my career I never expected to call myself a writer. I never expected to call myself an artist, either, but here I am, aged 51 and very much both writer and artist. I started my working life as a museum professional after a couple of academic degrees and from the…
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Beautiful but hollow
My view of ‘Dirty Looks: Desire and Decay in Fashion’ exhibition at The Barbican My initial review of this exhibition, written on the train home, was a list of things I didn’t like and disappointment at what could have, in my opinion, been done better. I didn’t make enough notes, take enough photos, nor do…
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Fragments of a whole
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by
What we lose when we cut things up As I prepare for my annual visit to the Antique Textiles Fair next week, I look back to a visit a couple of years ago and reflect on what I found, and what was missing. I crawled out of bed horribly early, in the dark, to get…
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Reading & Writing: Making Meaning Podcast Episode 62
A few weeks ago someone told me that she didn’t know I had written several books, so I realised I don’t talk enough about my writing! The podcast is about the writing of those books; three with traditional publishers and three self-published books about my work. The third self-published book is coming very soon, it…
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Stories of Sewing
Why are there so few books about women and their stitches? Where are the stories of sewing women? Where are the memoirs of stitchers and sewers? Thousands of women in this country sew, hundreds of thousands of us sew across the world, millions, surely. Sewing connects women across generations, across continents and cultures and across…
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The Absence of Green
A delve into verdure, or the lack of it, in textiles and in my studio As I sort through my textile collections, re-packing them into new (antique) drawers, I notice how little green I actually have. I don’t often work with green cloth, I don’t tend to wear a lot of green either, yet natural…
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Textile Book Group
A social online group to talk about our favourite books about textiles. We are a few months into Textile Book Group and working our way through a great book every month. I’ve decided to alternate long reads with shorter reads to give more time for the longer books. November’s session (Monday 3rd) is our short…
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Textile Book Group
A social online group to talk about our favourite books about textiles. A few weeks ago I hosted my first online textile book group and it was a delight! We talked about Clare Hunter’s Threads of Life and shared our reflections on the book, what resonated with our own stories, what we learned and how…
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Moving The Needle
The under-appreciated originality of Mary Linwood (1755-1845) This essay is inspired by the prompt of Originality, posed by Beth Kempton on Substack for the Summer of Substack Essay Festival. You are welcome to subscribe to my substack but for now I intend to keep copying my writing over here on my website, so you could…