Tag Archives: textile study space

Freestyle embroidery

Posted in creativity, techniques, textile study space, textiles by

I recently got to revisit this embroidery I made a few years ago to write a post for my Textile Study Space about freestyle, no rules embroidery. The post (for subscribers) is about techniques, experimenting and finding your own style and about knowing what feels right and what doesn’t. I ended up getting very self analytical about what my stitch style says about me, which is absolutely fascinating but also not where I intended to go!

Hand embroidery is a major part of my creative practice these days. I use stitch in pretty much everything I do, but when I started (18 years ago), I didn’t have hand embroidery in my repertoire. I was actively scared of it! There were rules and patterns and the ‘right’ way to do it and none of this was appealing to me. I have always struggled with remembering complex stitch patterns and getting French knots right.  I approach hand stitch in the same way that I approach a lot of my work – I use the technique, materials and processes that are appropriate to the story I am telling. And I make it up as I go along by testing, revising, unpicking and experimenting with my needle. If I like how it looks, then it’s right.

A snippet of the post

Textile Study Space is an online home for all the masses of textile techniques, making and study of historical textiles that I have amassed over the last two decades. I share posts about my work and how I’ve made it, techniques and ideas of how to use them in your own creative work, about materials and about the historical textiles that inspire and fascinate me.  The Textile Study Space is like being in my studio and having the chance to look around at the boxes of samples and projects, textile collections and my work-in-progress. You’ll find stitch and quilting, historic embroidery, printing and appliqué and masses more. It’s just £5 a month to join.

Learn new textile techniques with me

Posted in Art Textiles, creativity, Inspiration, My work, techniques, Textile History by

Textile Study Space is my online school for all things stitch and fabric. It’s a subscription site for just £5 with monthly posts and a growing archive of things like this.

I’ve been slowly building my Textile Study Space over the last year with new content about textiles, inspiration, my work and some techniques and ideas for how to use stitch and cloth.

In the last few months I’ve added a mini video workshop on stitch meditations like these here.

There’s also technique posts about negative space embroidery and about this glorious antique stitched card.

There’s a video lesson on how to make these little irregular patchwork windows (left) and a study of an antique patchwork (below).

There’s a tour of my fabric stash which is quite extensive!

And lots of background posts about my work including my use of digital print and studies of antique textiles.

And it’s only £5 monthly subscription for all of these archive posts and something new every month. Find out more and join Textile Study Space here.

Introducing Textile Study Space

Posted in creativity, Fabric Manipulation, techniques, Textile History, Work With Me by

One of the things I have missed during the pandemic is getting together with others in the same room and sharing textile techniques, ideas, seeing samples and threads, textile treasures and books. In 2022 I’m starting to run a lot more online textile workshops but I wanted to also do something more modest and accessible alongside. I wanted a space where I could share my love of textile techniques in a smaller way. From late January I will host a Textile Study Space on Patreon, a subscription site where I will gather and share fragments of textile. There will be mini tutorials, technique ideas, historical examples, pieces from my work, sketchbooks, samples and also from my historical museum of old and usually damaged textiles collection .

I want this space to be low-key and unpressured, somewhere you can explore textiles at your own pace, pick the things that interest you and explore. There’s no fixed outcome, you don’t have to make anything, it’s just there to inspire. There will be very low minimum price per month of subscription but if you find it valuable and can afford a bit more, the amount you pay will be flexible. I hope that will be nice and democratic, allowing textile enthusiasts who love what I do to be part of my creative world without the cost and commitment of other online programmes.

To find out when Textile Study Space opens, sign up to my mailing list here and I’ll let you know. I hope you will join me, I can’t wait to share some of the textile treasures in my studio.