Category: textiles
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Nature connection and colour
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Exploring green in the garden During my first nature-based residency in 2023, I read that humans can see more variations of green than of any other colour. That’s because we evolved to live in green places, needing to identify plants and food. I developed a lovely activity to explore this, using threads in many shades…
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Stitching The Garden
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Nature-inspired embroidery workshop in Mill Field Forest Garden on 8th August I keep saying I am going to stop running workshops but I can’t resist one more in the wonderful community garden I help to run. I was artist in residence here 2024-2025 and I still find it endlessly inspiring and I want to share…
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Introducing Material Histories with Deb McGuire. Making Meaning Episode 63
Material Histories is a new mini-series of Making Meaning Podcast with special guest co-host Deb McGuire. Deb is a brilliant historian, specialising in emotional histories of quilting, but she’s incredibly knowledgable about all kinds of things. We have so many overlapping interests and things we really want to talk about in the world of textile…
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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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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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Vintage & antique textile sale
Sunday 28th June. At Unit Twelve, Hixon, Staffordshire. You won’t be surprised to learn that I have far too much fabric in my studio… so I am having a sale, at the gorgeous gallery / studio Unit Twelve, run by Jennifer Collier. I have sorted out three big boxes of things I am ready to…
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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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Cherry Blossom and the power of co-creation
Last weekend I went to see Sara Cook’s Cherry Blossom Project in the Garden Museum, London and it was amazing! I don’t often get to take part in other artists’ projects so it was a real treat for me to be on the other side for a change. At the launch Sara talked about the…
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Accomplishments and Imagined Mementoes: Making Meaning Podcast Episode 61
This week’s episode is about the new body of work I made for Mary Linwood; Art, Stitch & Life exhibition. Alongside researching, curating and writing the first exhibition of Mary Linwood’s work in 75 year, I also created seven new artworks reflecting elements of Mary Linwood’s life and legacy. These pieces fill in gaps in…