Jennie-maree Tempest is a textile artist living on the Bass Coast of Australia. After many years creating art quilts and portraits, she has decided to challenge her textile art skills and creativity by creating textile art botanical sculptures. Jennie-maree focuses her creativity inspired by the native Australian species that grow around her coastal home. The latest is a flowering yucca that is around 6ft / nearly 2m tall! It has been a massive undertaking, and has taken over four months of hard work to create. It's not only a challenge of textile art but also of construction. How did she make such a large item out of fabric & threads? Today on the Stitchery Stories textile art podcast, Jennie-maree Tempest chats with Susan Weeks about her inspirations and challenges and her creative life by the coast. For this episode... View Show Notes, Links & Examples of Jennie-maree's work at http://www.stitcherystories.com/JenniemareeTempest Visit: https://jemartem.com/ Like : https://www.face...
Today on the Stitchery Stories textile art podcast, Nikki Parmenter shares her life in fabric & thread & a wide range of interesting materials too! She chats with Susan Weeks about the wide range of inspirations and materials that she uses to create her large scale art. And although Nikki has a Fine Art background, she is very much self-taught when it comes to incorporating textiles and embroidery into the mix! Plenty of experimenting has developed a vivid and exuberant style. Nikki 'escaped' the world of education back in 2016 but her absolute delight in teaching people still shines through everything that she does, and teaching is still an important aspect of her art practice. In fact, as the global pandemic took hold, and everything was cancelled, Nikki carried on experimenting, and moved online, becoming very visible, and offering online workshops and talks via Zoom rather than the traditional 'in-person' approach. She shares plenty of tips and insight into how she did that, and...
Tanya Bentham is an expert in the style of hand embroidery known as 'Opus Anglicanum'. It is a style of embroidery that was prevalent in the 13th & 14th centuries in England. Very specific stitches are used in a specific way with specific materials and style. Tanya shares her fascinating story of how she got started in embroidery and how the obsession with Opus Anglicanum started. It may sound dull that Tanya takes her inspiration from Medieval manuscripts. Far from it! Those manuscripts contain hilarious situations and crazy characters and this was an area that I wanted to dig down into with Tanya. There is a lot of humour in her work. She also loves to take old images and put a modern twist on them, but still using relevant imagery and sticking strictly to the style and methods of the era. Tanya has brought all that knowledge and experience together and her first book is just about to be published... exciting times! Susan Weeks chats with Tanya about: What is Opus Anglicanum? The ...
Vendulka Battais is a textile artist, quilter, embroiderer and designer who started her creative journey making clothes with her mum in the Czech Republic. She learnt simple patchwork when she moved to the UK and was looking for a new hobby! Vendulka shares her fabulous story of where that early interest in patchwork took her. It's a story of creativity and of making opportunities and of taking action. From squares and triangles, Vendulka's work has evolved into quilting and embroidery, and a love of circular patterns inspired by mandalas and dream-catchers. Her love of teaching shines through with in-person classes and her new range of online video courses too. Susan Weeks chats with Vendulka about: Coming out of covid lockdown and wondering what's next. Her dream of creating on demand online video classes. It's a whole new set of skills creating an online course. If you don't have guidance then you need plenty of time for trial and error! Investing effort into creating an on-demand online course is creating future income Habits have changed and online courses are now seen as a great way of learning and networking Running her fabric & haberdashery shop in Suffolk Starting her creative adventure with simple patchwork and quilting Starting a group which encourages designers to share their patterns and a central place to buy patterns from Connecting designers / creators with makers Being inspired by a 'stairway to heaven' Wanting to turn her hobby into a business and support her family Learning how to run a shop Celebrating 10 years as a shop business owner It's OK to improve over time... Just Start! Learning how to create with what you have The meditative effect of free motion quilting Glow in the dark fabric mandalas For this episode... View Show Notes, Links & Examples of Vendulka's work at https://stitcherystories.com/vendulkabattais Visit: https://www.oliven.co.uk/ Like : https://www.facebook.com/olivenpatchwork Look : https://www.instagram.com/vendulkaoliven/ Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwNXZS-is0c JOIN our Facebook Group to Buy & Sell patterns https://www.facebook.com/groups/buysellpatterns SIGN UP for Crafty Online Course Creator's Workbox to get started for FREE on your online course creation journey https://www.craftyonlinecoursecreator.info/workbox Other episodes you might like https://www.stitcherystories.com/amijames/ https://www.stitcherystories.com/saimakaur/ https://www.stitcherystories.com/lorraineturner/
Lorraine Turner is a textile artist who gives support for endangered animals through her vibrant textile art. Lorraine has been a practicing artist for many years as a graphic designer, working on wide variety of commercial projects but her adventure into textile art started a few years ago, and she adopted the 'no rules' approach to her textile art creations. Lorraine works on large textile art portraits of endangered animals, using bright patterned fabrics, materials and techniques that she experiments with to achieve what's in her head. Fabric applique, hand and free machine embroidery, aspects of quilting, so many techniques are layered together to produce her stunning art. A key impact on Lorraine's work is her inspiration. Endangered animals come to her via her daily meditations and tell her their stories and troubles. This is a fascinating story of working from the heart and attracting fabulous opportunities along the way. Lorraine chats with Susan Weeks in this episode of St...
Catriona Baird is Textiles Curator at Paisley Museum, in Scotland, which celebrates it's 150th anniversary on 11th April 2021. Catriona shares the story of the Paisley pattern - that swirly floral stylised teardrop motif that pops up in so many designs and objects, as well as of course on the famous Paisley Shawls. This is a story that brings together geography, history, fashion and textiles and gives a fabulous insight into early industrial textile production too. In this episode of Stitchery Stories, Catriona Baird chats with Susan Weeks around: Her current research as part of the Paisley Museum Re-imagined Project What is the Paisley Pattern Where did the Paisley pattern originate The history of Paisley as an important textile production centre Making Paisley Shawls The Jaquard Loom and making 'point paper' designs Paisley Museum history & its collections The types and styles of Paisley shawls The first exhibition of Paisley shawls The links with The Needlework Development Scheme...
Dr Gail Cowley is the founder and director of The School Of Stitched Textiles. Through the school, Gail offers a range of courses from beginner through to advanced practitioner, in a range of textile related subjects. As we hit the one year anniversary of Covid disruptions, lockdowns and challenges, we dig into many topics around online education and the acceptance of technology and learning via the internet. Gail shares tons of wisdom around creating online courses for practical, art and craft topics, and the changes that she has witnessed over the last few years in particular. We also chat about building and maintaining community around our stitching and learning, as well as how we can all support the things that we love. In this episode of Stitchery Stories, Gail Cowley chats with Susan Weeks around: knitting socks: her new lockdown obsession the volume of course work produced by her students during the pandemic everyone being more comfortable with video chats, using zoom, Facebo...
Ruth Norbury is a textile artist who specialises in creating urban decay art. But Ruth is full of contrasts and surprises, and today we dig into her story. She is almost entirely self taught, and loves to experiment to create the look and feel of her textile art. It's an ongoing challenge to represent the processes of decay in the urban landscape and buildings, using fabric and thread. So with that being said... you will be surprised to discover the subject that Ruth had been embroidering for many years! Feeling trapped by the commercial success of her embroidery art, Ruth has (finally) allowed her true artistic soul to emerge and guess what? What she produces now brings more success than her original topic ever did! There is so much to chat about and reflect upon in our conversation. In this episode of Stitchery Stories, Ruth chats with Susan Weeks around: falling into an artistic genre that really doesn't reflect your true soul being brave to make changes so you can be more 'you' ...
The Embroiderers' Guild in the UK was established back in 1906 and is a charity established to build awareness of stitch and textile art. They educate, encourage, inspire and promote the achievement of excellence. And also the Guild preserves an important collection of embroidery and textile art. Penny Hill is one of the Board of trustees of the Guild and today (February 2021) we are chatting about a very upsetting crisis within the Guild. It is on the verge of financial collapse, and drastic measures are being proposed by the Trustees to rescue what can be rescued to best meet the Guild's charitable objectives (and requirements). The members of the Guild are understandably upset and angry at the measures being proposed, and therefore I invited the Guild to come and chat about what's happening. Penny stepped up to chat with me Susan Weeks chats with Penny Hill around the issues facing the Embroiderers Guild and the forthcoming General Meeting to be held on 4th March 2021. We talked ...
Deanne Fitzpatrick is the artist and businesswoman behind HookingRugs, a globally popular rug hooking business based in Nova Scotia, Canada. Deanne shares with us a very interesting glimpse behind the scenes of her daily life as an artist and creative business owner. Susan Weeks chats with Deanne today on the Stitchery Stories textile art podcast. We delve into the backstory of how Deanne got hooked on rug hooking and why and how she started to develop a business around her beloved hobby. She talks about her creative process, and inspirations and her passion for sharing her art through rug hooking kits, online courses creation, several books about rug hooking and her successful weekly Facebook 'lives'. For this episode... View Show Notes, Links & Examples of Deanne's work at http://www.stitcherystories.com/deanefitzpatrick Visit: https://www.hookingrugs.com/ Like: https://www.facebook.com/DeanneFitzpatrickStudio Listen: https://hookingrugs.com/pages/podcasts Look: https://www.instag...