Dutch artist Mirjam had been put off textiles at school by critical teachers who insisted on following ‘the rules’. Even her own family taught her that there was a right and a wrong way to do embroidery. Instead, she became a children’s author. But, she was still intrigued with embroidery, and so her evenings were turned to experimenting with stitch, texture and pattern. 

Today, her nature-inspired crochet, felt works and embroideries – many worked on her own eco dyed and printed cloth – have led to large followings on Instagram, Etsy and Patreon, where she shares her knowledge via e-books and tutorials. 

Mirjam told us how the seasons are her inspiration, and that seeing Sue Stone tie a knot in her thread was the epiphany that freed her from decades of embroidery restrictions.

Creating with joy

Mirjam Gielen: It hasn’t been that long since I felt confident enough to call myself a textile artist. I learned many techniques in my youth, but I don’t have any formal training in the arts.

I love to combine my embroidery with eco printing and dyeing, crochet, felting and any other technique that helps to achieve the effect that I’m looking for.

Dyeing and printing with plants provides me with a stash of fabrics and threads. This makes me feel like a child in a room full of wonderful toys with endless possibilities!

I enjoy experimentation and that often leads to new discoveries of how to use a certain material or technique.

I create my art at home: our living room doubles as my workspace while our kitchen is frequently turned into a dye studio.

I try to limit dyeing to moments when my family members are out, or I’ll dye in the garden when the weather allows – the smells from the dye pot aren’t always appreciated. Otherwise, my family is very supportive: they help me by editing my tutorials or providing inspiration with photographs and research. In that way my work is very much embedded in family life.

My main platform is social media, especially Instagram, and I like to connect and share with people around the world. I’ve participated in a few exhibitions, but felt very much on display rather than connected to the visitors.

How did you become a textile artist?

My mother, grandmother and aunts always had some textile activity on the go. It could be knitting, embroidery, crochet or sewing, but also tatting or macramé. They invariably made things that were useful, like clothing, tablecloths or lampshades. They wanted to make them as beautiful as possible and were always on the lookout for a new pattern or pretty yarn.

They showed me the joy of needlework but were also quite obedient to what they called ‘the rules’.

At school I was often criticised for not working neatly enough. That might have been to do with the fact that I am left-handed, but was forced to do all the crafts right-handed. I was constantly chided and forced to undo my work. It left me with the idea that textile work could be great, but I just wasn’t good enough.

I kept creating on a modest scale, because the fun and satisfaction of making things with my own hands kept its appeal. The birth of my children stimulated that and I loved to craft for and with them.

I was an author of children’s books when my children were young and I started the habit of doing some stitching or crochet after a day spent juggling with words. I just played with colours and stitches as a relaxing downtime, without much thought about results. That was when the joy came back and I was able to create more freely. Slowly it grew into something more.

Did you have a particular turning point that influenced your art?

I had done some botanical dyeing with my mother, but that had been forgotten over the years. When I saw eco printed fabrics online and read a book by India Flint on the subject, something clicked and I started eco dyeing and printing myself. The fabrics I produced turned out to be the ideal basis for my stitches. 

Another pivotal moment came during a TextileArtist online course by Sue Stone. It was something really simple: she tied a knot in her thread before starting. I was aghast because I’d been taught that tying knots was more or less a deadly sin! My grandmother used to say that the back of the work should be as neat as the front – knots had no place there. 

Seeing a renowned textile artist like Sue Stone actually tying a knot was very freeing. It made me realise that I still had lots of rules in my head that were hampering my artistic freedom. 

Sue’s style is very different from mine, but she still is a role model for me in her approach to textile art. It encouraged me to get rid of the last remnants of my harsh inner critic and enjoy the creative force of exploration and experimentation.

“Eco prints feel like a magical world I can explore with my needle.”

Mirjam Gielen, Textile artist

Patterns, lines & structures

What is the ethos behind your work of creating organic embroidery on eco printed fabric?

Nature is important to me and provides a constant source of inspiration. Outdoors, I feel nourished and relaxed.

I feel that textile work has a lot in common with organic processes. I can make my stitches small or big, dense or wide apart. They can be grouped together like a herd or wander around. They colonise the fabric in an organic way, growing slowly, stitch by stitch.

Stitches have their own characteristics that are a bit like the DNA that provide code for the stitch process. A french knot looks distinctive and not like a seed stitch, just like a rose looks like a rose and not like a tulip. Then there are the influences that can steer the process in a multitude of directions, similar to the influences of soil, sun or rain in nature.

“There are so many fascinating and beautiful structures and phenomena in nature that provide inspiration.”

Mirjam Gielen, Textile artist

Eco printing helps to get rid of the ‘blank page’ problem. It immediately provides an environment that can be explored with stitches. It invites intuitive stitching and a dialogue with the fabric.

Embroidery gives me direct contact with the fabric and I think that is why it is my preferred technique. But I don’t like to limit myself: crochet, for instance, can provide interesting and organic looking structures too. Felting has also found a place in my practice, not only because it is such a delight to stitch on, but also because it can be three-dimensional.

How do you develop ideas for your work?

For inspiration, I use images that I take with my camera or that I find on the internet. I collect them on boards on Pinterest. My next step is often to draw in a sketchbook, not with the aim of designing my work in detail, but to get a hands-on feel for patterns, lines and structures. I also often make stitch samples before starting on an art work. 

These stitch explorations have led to several ‘sketchcloths’, as I like to call them; eco printed fabrics that get filled over time with all sorts of experiments. The free stitch play on those fabrics is appealing enough to blur the line between ‘sample’ and ‘art’. 

My focus is increasingly on the process rather than on the result. I can start out with a mix of inspiring images as a basis, but once I get stitching, I let my intuition lead me. I might end up with something different from what I envisioned beforehand. And, when that leads to a ‘blah’ result, I don’t see that as a failure, but as a valuable lesson and a stage in my process.

Botanical dyes, reclaimed materials

What materials do you especially like to use in your work?

I want to have a practice that doesn’t contribute to the environmental issues that we face. Industrial dyeing of fabrics is one of the most polluting industries, and I don’t want to add to that if I can help it.

Botanical dyeing is one of the solutions, but I also use reclaimed materials. I do sometimes buy new materials like goldwork threads though – I’m not looking to create a new inner critic that chides me for not being strict enough regarding my efforts to be sustainable.

There’s a lot that can be found online, from shops that sell botanical dyestuffs or organic linen, to online market places where people ask a small price for their grandmother’s leftover stash.

I once bought a large box of threads from a widower who proudly showed me all of his wife’s work. He was selling her stash to raise enough money to buy a piece of ceramic art for her grave. Every time I use her threads I remember how lovingly he talked about her. That’s the kind of added bonus that you don’t get with store bought items.

What’s been your biggest challenge in creating your art, and how did you overcome that challenge?

I think the biggest challenge was to overcome self-doubt and self-critique. I was held back by old beliefs and musty rules. My harsh inner critic was frantically trying to keep me safe, safe from disappointment, ridicule or failure – be perfect, it would say, or better still, don’t even try. It’s like an overprotective friend that hates to see you get hurt but also has a totally unrealistic estimate of the dangers. 

I have found that many of the things that I feared are in fact non-existent.

If a composition doesn’t work, I can undo things, add stitches, add an appliqué or simply try again. If I run out of steam, it’s okay to rest for a bit – my mojo won’t get lost. I can’t lose what truly belongs to me and if it doesn’t truly belong to me, it’s okay to lose it. I have started to trust in that, and it’s brought me lots of joy, through the work itself and in sharing it with others.

Time & teaching

How do you organise your working week?

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if there were more than 24 hours in a day? But then I’d probably still discover that I didn’t have a drop to drink all morning or that it’s way past lunchtime! I can get completely engrossed in my work.

On the other hand, working from home can lead to people thinking that you are always available. I’ve had to learn to let the phone ring and say no to invitations to go for a coffee when I’m working.

Creating classes and tutorials takes up a big part of my time. I love to teach, but I need to protect the amount of time spent on it.

Social media can be another distraction. I try to take regular pauses while stitching, so as not to overtax my body by sitting in one position for too long. But I tend to fill that time by scrolling on my phone and, before I know it, I’m answering a question on Instagram, clicking on interesting links and reading messages from friends.

Being self-employed means having a lot of freedom – I can take a walk whenever I feel like it – but it also requires quite a bit of self-management.

I have a lot of followers on Instagram and a growing number of patrons on Patreon – that can lead to a feeling that I have to create interesting content all the time for all those lovely people.

Textile work is often labour-intensive and progress can be slow, so I don’t always have something new to show. When I feel that pressure I take a deep breath and realise that those demands are just in my head. Nobody actually gets angry or hurt when I don’t produce constantly.

Taking time off to stare out of the window, go on a walk or do a simple chore is time well spent as it creates space for my brain to process inspiration and come up with new ideas.

This is also similar to natural processes: seeds need time to germinate and winter days are just as important as the abundance of summer.

How is your work evolving?

I find that I’m drawn more and more to working three-dimensionally. It poses challenges that I avoided for a long time. I started with stitching on felt balls, but there are so many more possibilities – I’m excited to see where it leads me.

Do you have one or two tips for makers?

My best tip would be to focus on the process. To enjoy the journey wherever it leads.

If you see all your works as steps in an ongoing process, you become less afraid of failing. Failure doesn’t even exist. If you discover, for instance, that appliqué is not your thing or that you really shouldn’t have combined those two fabrics, that’s a lesson that will fuel your creative development just as much as any ‘successes’ will.

Another tip is to feel free to learn from others. Being inspired to try something you see someone else doing is not stealing ideas but a way of finding your own voice.

In textiles, we’re interconnected by a long tradition that spans many ages and cultures, and that always was and is the property of everyone. That said, it’s only fair to honour your sources of inspiration and give credit where it’s due.

Kelly Boehmer’s artworks hint at the same dichotomy. While some people discern images that appear eerie, grotesque or even disturbing, others notice the faux fur, the glitter, the bright sparkly colours and enticing textures.

Kelly’s artworks have been described as ‘art that you might think twice about taking your children to see’. A pink faux fur wolf head with fangs bared; a fluffy wall of gut-filled bricks; butterflies languishing in the hot pink villi of a stomach; a fleshy human arm dripping off its white fur canvas; or a puppy – colourful and textural but more akin to something from a Stephen King novel than a celebrity’s cute handbag dog. All fashioned from faux fur, yarn, organza, beads and glitter – apart from the occasional bone.

But it’s this very contrast between representation and medium that gives artistic licence to Kelly’s psychedelic images. Delve a little deeper and there’s a purpose behind her imaginings.

In scrutinising challenging psychological territory, she hopes that her making is not only therapeutic to her but also for viewers – an invitation to process some of their own deepest emotions.

It’s a visual, and visceral, experience that can either thrill or abhor – your reaction is up to you.

Attraction & repulsion

Kelly Boehmer: My main themes are anxiety, death and growth.

I have social anxiety, so I often make work about anxieties, and I sometimes give my work an anxious look. I also like to show the positive aspects of anxiety that are often misunderstood.

I think there’s a strange beauty to the energy and heightened awareness that anxiety can give: fantasy and anxiety are like two sides of the same coin.

It’s funny that someone who has social anxiety would go into teaching and performance art. Oddly, I try to go towards my fears in life sometimes. I was fortunate to find a career as an art educator, where my artwork and job are linked. Doing research for my students is also inspiring for me.

I often use taxidermy as a way to explore the hidden beauty of death. By dressing up the taxidermy creatures, it can make the idea of death more approachable.

I also like using different metaphors for growth – such as moulting – in my work. Showing creatures shedding their skin can symbolise me moving past (or at least confronting) my anxieties and fears.

I’m interested in the push/pull of attraction and repulsion. That’s a complex feeling – one that’s stronger than a single pure, uncomplicated emotion, like attraction alone.

“I think that when I experience attraction and repulsion together in an artwork, it takes me longer to process my feelings and the sensation lingers with me.”

Kelly Boehmer, Textile artist

My art is abstract enough for the viewer to fill in the blanks so that they’re connecting to it on their own terms. I don’t spell everything out.

I want to leave enough clues to pull them in and to leave them with a particular feeling. The feeling or impression is usually bittersweet, mysterious, silly, and a fearful sensation all mashed together.

Getting bold with fibres

I’m lucky that my whole family has always been very supportive of my art. I really appreciate that – I realise it’s not the case for many artists. My mom was a graphic designer and ran her own business from home, so I got to see how art could become a career path.

Both of my grandmothers did a range of different craft practices including crochet, knitting, sewing, doll making and decorative painting. I met my husband, Chuck Carbia, in graduate school when his studio was next to mine. Now we are both art educators. He gives me a lot of help, support and feedback.

I studied art in school but didn’t work much with fibres until graduate school. I initially started out as a painter, but when I hit a point where my work was stuck, that’s when I started to embroider into my paintings. The embroidery became more and more three dimensional, until I started making fibre works in the round.

I was timid about using saturated colour and texture in painting but, when I started using fibres as a medium, it seemed like an opportunity to try something completely new.

“This experimental mindset helped me become bolder with my use of bright colours and complex textures.”

Kelly Boehmer, Textile artist

History revisited

Usually, I’m inspired by a work from art history and that’s the springboard into my process. I completely reinterpret the art historical reference, so sometimes it isn’t even recognisable in the final work. 

Examples of this are Jan van Eyck’s The Arnolfini Portrait (1434), the Italian sculpture Laocoön and His Sons which inspired my artwork Laocoon. The Henri Rousseau painting Tiger in a Tropical Storm inspired Jungle. And Jeff Koons’ vast Puppy sculpture made of stainless steel, soil and flowering plants, which I referenced for my own similarly titled work, Puppy. 

I’m also inspired by the artists Monica Cook, David Altmejd, Mike Kelley, Louise Bourgeois, Yayoi Kusama, Claes Oldenburg, Ebony Patterson, and Roxanne Jackson.

Recently I’ve been influenced by interesting imagery on the cooking shows that I love. For example, I created my Drool sculpture after watching a chef skin an alligator. It was such an odd, alien thing to see. It was both disgusting and strangely beautiful, and I could not get the image out of my head.

Start with a sketch

I usually start with a very rough gesture sketch to help me figure out a basic overall composition, but I never keep a sketchbook. Using a sketchbook I’d feel like the drawings would become too precious as final products for me.

I prefer to grab a scrap piece of paper where I feel freer to experiment and make mistakes. The closest thing to a sketchbook that I use is the notes app in my phone. I’ll write down title ideas or basic sculpture ideas before I sketch them. 

I like to save images on my phone that I take at museums or find on social media. I use these as part of my research, and they often end up being reference images for my work.

After I have a sketch and a reference image, the process is mostly intuitive. Having said that, there’s a certain aesthetic and a level of time and labour that I like to have invested in an artwork before it feels resolved for me.

My work is extremely slow-paced and labour intensive, because it’s all stitched by hand. I try to find a balance between going too rigid or it being a free-for-all in my process.

I make hundreds of small parts, either by sewing in my studio at home or while I’m on the move: I take a travel sewing kit with me in my purse everywhere I go. This portable studio allows me to find time here and there to chip away at a larger project, even if my teaching is keeping me busy.

When all the parts are complete, I assemble everything in my studio. I also like to incorporate bits from older sculptures, after I’ve already shown them in an exhibition. They get cut apart and mixed in with the new pieces, which adds more visual variety to the final piece.

One piece that I haven’t been able to cut up and reuse is my sculpture Puppy. When I do feel ready to destroy it, I might do something special to cut it apart, maybe something that could become performative.

Taxidermy & organza

I love to talk about my materials! One of my favourites is upcycling taxidermy. Friends, students and colleagues often donate taxidermy, bones or skulls that they find.

I also find rejected taxidermy that’s either damaged or not properly preserved at thrift stores or on eBay or Etsy. I clean them up using Dawn brand dish soap. It’s surprisingly effective at treating bones. I store red cedar blocks with my fabrics and taxidermy to prevent moths.

I like using sheer silk organza as a way to layer colour. It can almost work like a sheer glaze in painting. I often stuff the organza with yarn.

I sometimes get little odds and ends of yarn donated to me or I’ll find half skeins of yarn at Starlandia in Savannah, a store selling reclaimed art supplies. Soft materials are the perfect vehicle for making work exploring the fear of unknowns like death. 

My must-have tools include Gütermann red thread (I particularly like their polyester #408), Fiskars’ spring action scissors, magnetic pin cushions and copper compression wrist bands. I haven’t officially been diagnosed with arthritis, but I often have symptoms that I believe are caused by sewing.

Becoming a better artist

I struggled as a young artist, and I didn’t have a lot of what some would call ‘natural talent’. But I did possess a lot of determination to become a better artist. I learned that if you invest the time into the process, you eventually develop your own style or voice, and then you’ll see improvement.

“The best advice, that I often remind myself of, is to stay playful and keep experimenting – it’s so much more constructive than worrying about failing.”

Kelly Boehmer, Textile artist

The two artists had known each other for a long time so they quickly grasped the potential benefits of working together. Each gained insights from the other’s work while meeting online and in the studio.

Amanda was able to incorporate weavings made by Johanna, which added an extra element of interest to her compositions. And Amanda’s experiments triggered new ideas for Johanna. This co-working experience helped to motivate them both and accelerate their progress.

When you read on, you’ll find inspiration and ideas for working with others, and discover how collaboration can elevate your art to a new level. Through a productive phase of shared activity, Johanna and Amanda were able to release feelings of protectiveness of their own work, bounce ideas off each other, and allow their work to evolve into a cohesive gathering of exhibits. 

There’s more than one way to stimulate your creative ideas – and collaborative working might be just what you are looking for.

Accumulating, remembering, archiving…

Can you tell us a little about the art you make?

Amanda Britton: Utilising unconventional materials including paper, vellum, resin and plexiglass, the work I make is like intricate fabrics, ‘woven’ with a variety of techniques, colours, and constructions.

Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of migration – moving towards some things and away from others. The ways in which we shift, change and create patterns, rituals and repetition. 

Creating intersections, remembering, and archiving the parts that are left behind, my work takes the form of sewn collages on paper, bringing together fragments of material, paper, and found objects – or casts of those objects. 

I’ve always been interested in the perpetuation of relationships between people and the exploration of families, place, narrative and language. Concerned with documentation and preservation, my work is personal in concept, yet quirky and humorous in delivery. 

Johanna Norry: My work employs the traditional techniques of weaving, hand knitting, coiling, embroidery and stitching. Often I create work that combines comforting materials with unexpected forms. I take a similar approach when I am collaging and working with photos, whether family snaps or found images, or mining memories – working with real and metaphorical archives. 

My artistic process is to respond to my research in a way that culminates with art and installations that are themselves a sort of documentation, whether an accumulation or manipulation of evidence. The resulting work might appear incomplete, and distorted, with only a fraction of the truth remaining, as revealed by my material interpretations. 

I used to see my textile work and my collage work as separate. Recently, those lines began to blur. It began with appliqué textile collage and quilted portraits, and morphed into woven photos, piecing together my hand woven and hand knitted material in the same manner as I might assemble various photos and papers into a more traditional collage. 

The metaphors of weaving, stitching and collage are always at the forefront of my art making thought process. My work is usually about my inner life, my identity, my values and obsessions, my connection to my family and ancestors, and I combine disparate parts as a way of illustrating how I am made up inside – different parts, different experiences and different inheritances, sometimes cohesive and sometimes incongruous. 

What initially attracted you to textiles as a medium? 

Amanda: My mother, Heather Britton, ignited my passion for textile art and design. I grew up falling asleep to the hum of her sewing machine – she’s a novice sewer and also worked in the carpet industry for more than 40 years. 

Johanna: My husband’s mother was a textile artist and weaver, with a weaving studio in Rochester, New York. She had several weavers who came to her studio each day to weave her commissions. Sadly, she died from cancer just a few years after I met her. I inherited everything from her studio including her loom, her tools, her yarn and her notes. 

I was pregnant at the time and the last thing I had time for was learning to weave. It all went into storage and I made myself a promise that I would learn to weave on the same schedule she did When my son turned five, I signed up for a weaving class. I was immediately hooked and took classes for several years. 

One of my weaving teachers suggested I take a dyeing class at Georgia State University. After just a few weeks I knew that I wanted to make art and be in the textiles classroom, for the rest of my life. 

While pursuing my Textiles BFA and MFA, my work expanded beyond weaving, and incorporated embroidery, knitting, digital processes, piecing and quilting, and felting. I chose the process that I thought best suited the concept I was exploring.

As an older student, others assumed that I already knew how to do all these things, but it was all new to me. The last time I’d used a sewing machine was when I got a C grade for a wraparound skirt made in my junior high home economics class. 

My gravitation toward fibres wasn’t based on familiarity of technique, but rather the familiarity with fabric. We adorn our bodies and homes with fabric, and the textures, patterns and colours can elicit memories and nostalgic longing.

My work with fibre may have started with the inheritance of a loom, but I really can’t imagine any other medium being better suited for communicating my ideas about the human experience.

Long term support

Tell us more about how this collaboration came about… 

Johanna: Amanda and I met in graduate school at the University of Georgia. For two years, our studios were next door to each other. It was awesome. And while I think I was subtly aware of the specialness of that time, and the luxury of devoting time to making our own work within a supportive community, I wasn’t quite prepared for how much I would miss it when I moved on. 

It turned out that Amanda also missed it and, fairly soon after she graduated, we decided to meet occasionally, if not regularly, to support each other and critique each other’s work. 

While our show’s name Common Thread refers to the relationship we began to observe in our current work, the truth is there was already a thread – conceptually, if not aesthetically – in our graduate school work as well.

Amanda’s work was tethered to her family memories and the ephemeral nature of memory itself, and my work was also rooted in family, in research, and unearthing hidden family secrets and exposing them to the light of day through my art.

We had both been regularly making and showing work in juried shows since graduation. But we were also both beginning to accumulate work that felt like it needed to be shown all together.

‘Our decision to work towards a show together, Common Thread, was so organic that I cannot even remember who thought of it first.’

Johanna Norry, Textile artist

Once we had decided to collaborate, it motivated both of us to flesh out work we had started, and to make more, knowing that if our proposals were accepted, we would need to do a lot of work to fill a gallery. As we were making new pieces, that’s when the collaboration conversation began – the intentional back and forth development process, responding to elements we observed in each other’s work.

Back & forth process

Tell us about the collaboration process…

Johanna: Amanda and I began to prepare for our first duo show at Berry College, Georgia, in the summer of 2023. Initially, we worked separately in our home studios, communicating by texting photos of our work to each other.

Then we organised several joint studio days where we would bring our works in progress – works we considered finished – as well as remnants, and uncommitted bits of cloth that we had created by one method or another. 

Pieces migrated from my table to hers, and vice versa. For example, I had a long and narrow woven test sample, which Amanda saw with fresh eyes; she cut it in two and incorporated it in an installation of dyed organza strips that she had sewn ephemera into. 

Our process was like a conversation – a back and forth. I would see something in Amanda’s work, like the way she was using family beach photos, shells and references to the migration of sea birds. I realised that I also had 1970s family photos taken at the beach that I could use, and my own collection of rocks and shells.

This led to my weaving together old family photos, pairing them with collages of woven remnants, and combining rocks and shells with off-loom wovens in plexiglass boxes, as companions to Amanda’s natural history display-inspired assemblages.

How did you achieve the collaboration, logistically? 

Amanda: Thankfully, both Johanna and I live and work relatively close to one another in North Georgia. Over the summer, my university’s facilities were open and available, which allowed us a central location to meet and make. While we did call and meet online, our most productive days were those shared in the same studio space. 

Our advice for anyone collaborating or wanting to initiate a collaborative project is to let it be organic. Partner with someone you respect and are excited by their work. Ask yourself if you see a connection in your work, while still being distinct from each other.

‘A collaborative connection might be the theme, process or an aesthetic. If there’s a connection between you, that you think others could see as well, then that’s a good place to start.’

Amanda Britton, Textile artist

While it was awesome that we could meet and work together in the studio, it would equally be possible to collaborate with someone in another city, thanks to Zoom and ease of sharing virtually.

Evolution & unification

Did the project’s exhibition feel as cohesive as you hoped?

Amanda: We had a lot of wonderful feedback from both students and staff at Berry College. The work covers so many different techniques, mediums and interests, including photography, textiles, sculpture and installation, yet it was unified by colour and archiving concepts. 

We wanted to push the visuals and create an unexpected viewer experience. I think we captured this with scale variations and colour juxtaposition of the work.

However, and I think Johanna would agree with me, as soon as the exhibition went up we knew the work would likely shift and evolve as it travelled to its next location. Edits and considerations have been vital throughout. 

How did you help your audience understand the connections built through the collaboration? 

Amanda: Johanna and I are very intentional about the layout of our travelling exhibition. Not only have we considered the space of each gallery (the Moon Gallery at Berry College is expansive with low ceilings, whereas Westobou is a tight space with high ceilings), but we are also interested in conceptualising new or alternative display methods. 

Like paintings, textile works tend to be displayed in very traditional ways and we knew we wanted to activate the space differently. Whether hanging woven pieces high and then paper collages low, we are intentionally and thoughtfully curating the works by colour, technique and concurring themes.

Also in this duo display, we’re not concerned with labelling every piece with its maker and materials – we like the idea of just letting the viewer experience the work as a unified whole.

Did you have any previous experience that helped prepare you for working on a duo project?

Johanna: In graduate school, Amanda and I, along with another textile artist and two ceramic artists, collaborated on a show called Undermined. The collaboration involved the ceramic artists making work, primarily functional objects, but also more sculptural and figurative work, then the three textile artists set about undermining the functionality of the objects.

We bound plates together with thread, which included my knitted tubes that connected the cups to each other, and a web of screen printed silk organza created by Amanda. 

Undermined was my first experience of collaboration as a sort of call and response process. The Common Thread collaboration was similar, but the conversation was more of a repeated back and forth process, rather than a simple call and response.

Other group shows I’d been in were different, in that I was invited because my work was perceived as fitting into an already existing concept. The artworks in those shows were pieces I had already made and had not been created in such a conversational way.

The benefits of collaboration

Could you choose one particular favourite artwork and share how the collaborative process improved it?

Amanda: Carapace Capsules is one of my favourite collaborative pieces in the show. The piece is small in scale but allows for an intimacy with the work.

Both Johanna and I are very interested in the concept of the archive: questioning what is collected and what memories are retained through these mementoes. These transparent boxes and trays felt like precious time capsules that combine both of our unique perspectives. 

Johanna: Possibly my favourite collaboration of the exhibit relates to how we installed our work together, and how we viewed our work in relation to each other’s art. 

We decided to install Amanda’s work Hereditary Smoker Series, a pair of plexi-trapped textiles and digitally printed vellum, next to my work Sapelo Dreams: Asleep in a Live Oak, a long clasp-woven cloth and a pair of woven collages I made from weavings on hand-painted warps.

I would never have installed these collages on their own in this way, higher and lower than usual. But it was all about the interaction of the work – we invited the viewer to see my work through Amanda’s work, which was mounted on hinges perpendicular to the wall. 

Amanda’s work was about her grandmother, and my pieces were about my own family memories of places (Sapelo Island, a favourite family camping spot) and about our lives as a process of repair, piecing ourselves (back) together from a combination of inheritances and experiences.

I think both our works were elevated by their proximity and how they interacted with each other.

What were the main benefits of collaborating and would you do it again (with other artists or with each other)? 

Amanda: Since this experience, I’ve been more receptive to both working with others and using techniques, processes and mediums that I’m not as familiar with. For instance, I am in the beginning stages of a collaborative project with a local sculptor for an outdoor sculpture installation. Without this experience with Johanna, I wouldn’t have been as easily persuaded to join in on this opportunity. 

Johanna: I’d collaborate again, most definitely. And I’m thinking of including a collaboration project in my textiles course next semester. I’d love to give my students an opportunity to experience the impact of working with another artist and the effect it can have on the direction of their work.

Do you have any tips for readers wanting to set up their own collaborative project?

Johanna: My advice would be to begin with trust. I already knew and trusted Amanda. I knew that while our processes were not the same, that they were compatible. A collaboration could be successful with two artists who were previously strangers, but you can’t go into a collaboration with a fear of the other artist stealing your ideas or accusing you of stealing theirs.

‘If you begin with respect, trust, and a commitment to honour each other in the work that comes out of the collaboration, I think it will be a positive experience and it will result in elevating both artists’ work.’

Johanna Norry, Textile artist

Amanda and I have a show coming up in 2025 where the curator has paired us with another duo of textile artists who know each other, but we don’t know them or their processes, and I am hopeful it will be successful and an uplifting experience.

Amanda: Setting and sticking to a timeline would be my biggest tip – deadlines for a show or an upcoming application can help with the planning of your timeline. 

Also, it’s handy for both contributors to be working on a similar scale or technique. For example, Johanna and I both knew we wanted to create long narrow pieces to have as a visual mirroring effect.

When she suggested creating an eight foot woven assemblage Sometimes, It Just Fits, that allowed a direction for my nine foot collection display A Sea of Sinister Dots. These pieces were displayed across the gallery from each other, and I love the effect of the scale and central placement.

How has the collaboration affected your own art practice? 

Amanda: Before this experience, I would say I was closed off to the idea of collaboration.

I am very goal-oriented and independently motivated, however, this experience has allowed me to see how collaboration is important for growth – not only as a person but to allow one’s art to grow as well.

It is amazing to have a partner to bounce around ideas for colours, techniques and concepts with.

Johanna: I’ve always sought feedback. Whenever I make something, at the very least my husband gets called in to look at it, and I value his response.

But I’ve also felt possessive about what I’ve made – or perhaps protective is a better word. Like I had some sort of parental responsibility to defend my art, since I had made it.

I think the collaborative, sharing process – where things I’ve made have been incorporated into Amanda’s work, and things she’s made have gone into mine – has expanded my emotional attachment to my artworks. I feel more accepting of what they become once they’re made.

When Elisabeth Rutt goes outdoors, she looks up, around and down, finding all the texture, colour and form she needs to create a unique piece of art. Influenced by the landscape, the ever changing skies and weather, Elisabeth selects from her favourite textile techniques to interpret the shapes and linear patterns she sees.

She applies her individual stamp by developing her own fabrics – especially by dry felting with an embellisher – or by changing fabrics she already has. Elisabeth further manipulates her materials using weaving, melting, shaping, dyeing, printing and painting, before finishing with simple hand stitching, darning and beading. But her skill lies in her command of her materials – and it’s gratifying to see just how well they obey.

Fine art perspective

Elisabeth Rutt: I am an artist working with textiles, and my work comes from somewhere between my art school training and my lifelong love of textiles and stitch. I approach my work from a fine art perspective rather than being led by a technique.

As long as I can remember the ‘feel’ of cloth has always been important to me. I’ve never stopped loving that sensation and using it for my creative purposes.

Elisabeth Rutt, Textile artist

The driving forces in my work are form, colour and excellence of design, what I can make them do, and what they will do for me in return. I’ve attended many courses over the years to gather a repertoire of textile techniques, but have come to rest on hand stitching. I like to keep it simple, not doing anything too technically difficult or overtly impressive. I want the work and what I want it to say – not the technique – to be predominant. My stitches are drawn marks that record what I’ve observed or am thinking about, and work is usually, but not always, abstract. 

I move between design work and stitching throughout the development of a project, rather than finishing design work and moving on to fabric and thread. This helps me to keep a project alive and I can stay open to new ideas for as long as I want to keep the topic active.

Lifelong love of art

When I was asked as a child ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’, my response was always ‘I am going to be an artist’, which was usually shrugged off as childish fantasy.

My father was a professional artist and illustrator, so I was fortunate to see what this meant as a way of life and I had few illusions. The elderly lady who lived next door taught me to sew from a very early age and I grew up drawing, painting and sewing every minute I could, doing each with equal importance and obsession.

After school, and taking as many art and textile related exams the curriculum would allow, I went on to complete a Bachelor of Humanities honours degree in Art and Dance at Goldsmiths College, University of London. During this study, I continued stitching for relaxation and I also sneaked stitch into my fine art course work as often as I could.

While my two sons were young, I studied for a City and Guilds Embroidery parts 1 and 2. The old syllabus had proper exams in technique, history and a three hour timed design paper… good times! I achieved distinction and highly commended in the medal of excellence scheme. 

I was also a member of the Embroiderers’ Guild and was able to do every workshop they held on Saturdays while my husband babysat. The Guild gave me the opportunity to learn from some of the most renowned textile artists and tutors at the time, for which I’ll always be grateful.

Since then I’ve worked as an interior designer, as a mentor for a textiles masterclass in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, and as a manager for Smiths Row art gallery in Bury St Edmunds.

My sons are now grown men and I work freelance from my studio at home. I make work for exhibitions, commissions and I run a tutor textile and design workshop at West Suffolk College, Bury St Edmunds, and others by invitation.

Inspiration all around

For the last few years I’ve worked with landscape, skies, patterns and the weather. They are all around me and I can’t escape them!

I’ve been focusing particularly on the patterns of our British landscape, including those of the underlying chalk and how it’s influenced the landscapes that I’ve lived in all my life. The white eroded patterns and lines of pathways, the tractor tracks, ancient buildings and earthworks, and the meanderings of chalk streams across the land has led me to make work about geology, landforms, and the many layers of underlying patterns in the land. I’ve used hand stitch and surface darning on my own dry felted fabrics, with screen printing and a small number of old paper maps to create my own ‘mind’s eye’ textile landscapes.

I’ve moved my work on by looking up at the broad East Anglian skies, making work about the sky, our weather and the colour palettes I see in different weather phenomena. I have called this body of work the Weather series. Constructed ground fabrics and hand darning still feature, but my design emphasis has developed. In this work I’ve been interested in observing, and recording in darned swatches, the colour schemes of different weather phenomena.

Continuing my interest in the weather I’ve also been working intermittently with snow as a starting point for new work. I’ve used beading, with my usual hand stitching, felting, and darning, in this continuing project.

I work within a body of work for a long time and am very concerned about making work in series. I consciously try to take an element from one series of work into the next. This gives me continuity whilst progressing and developing myself, my skills and my work.

Sketching preparation

The ideas and inspirations that inform my work are very varied. Once I have an idea, I research my subject thoroughly by reading, observing, making visits and using sketchbooks. I may work from detailed drawings and research, or use a piece of particular fabric or thread as an initial starting point. 

I try to draw in ways that will easily move into fabric and thread, often stitching directly into the paper pages alongside other media. Sometimes I stitch into a drawing or sketch, but I also stitch into blank sketchbook pages. When I stitch in this way, I have the same thought process as when I draw with pencil or pens.

Having sampled with drawing media and threads in a sketchbook I move to my fabric, which I’ve usually ‘made’ or changed in some way to make it truly my own before adding stitches.

Manipulating materials

I use very ordinary materials, always feeling a bit sceptical about the latest and newest big thing. I use a variety of fabrics, usually in small pieces that I combine to make a larger piece of cloth to work on.

I’m led by what I see, and I allow the work to grow and gain the right visual vocabulary.

Elisabeth Rutt, Textile artist

I work with materials that I’ve woven, melted, shaped, dyed, printed or painted. I rarely use commercial fabrics and am increasingly using my embellisher to make my own original dry felt, to use as my ground fabric for hand stitching; it’s rare that I use my sewing machine for embroidery. I enjoy chance and asymmetry, with a nod to geometry. The more I sew the more I want to simplify the construction of the stitches I use, although areas are often densely stitched.

My favourite thread is cotton perlé, numbers 8 and 12, but I do use other similar threads from my long years of collecting materials. Most have long lost their labels and so I’m no longer sure what they are. Some fabrics and threads are ones I’ve previously dyed myself.

I’ve tried very hard, over the last 10 years or so, to not buy anything new. Like most people who sew, I have an enormous stash of fabrics, threads, beads and haberdashery. I like to use second-hand garment fabrics whenever I can.

Meeting time challenges

My biggest challenge has been finding the time to make work. Anyone who hand stitches knows the enormous amount of time it takes. When my sons were a bit older and at school, however little time I could find to stitch, I always called it ‘mummy’s work’ and never approached what I was doing as a hobby. I think this helped them and me to take what I was doing seriously, and they were always respectful of the time I needed to work and of the artworks I made.

Magnum opus

The piece I would consider my magnum opus to date is Land Cloth from my Landmarks series. Before I began making, I decided that this piece would be designed to lie horizontally, just as a cloth would lie on a table, but raised a little higher so that it doesn’t look like a piece of domestic linen. I wanted it to be viewed as landscape features lie over the earth’s surface rather than hung on a wall in a vertical plane.

I became completely immersed in it, as it took about a year to complete. It’s not quite the biggest thing I’ve ever worked on, but there was certainly the most ‘making’ involved. I made the fabric first with dry felting techniques before I stitched anything, and then felted back into it in a limited way as I stitched.

It felt like a trip through the landscape – through my ‘journey’ making felted cloth I created the different colours and land features I wanted to represent.

Elisabeth Rutt, Textile artist

It was exhibited at the Knitting and Stitching Show but, due to its size and being made to be seen horizontally as the land lies, it proved tricky to exhibit elsewhere. It remains with me safely rolled up, but I do share it occasionally if I’m teaching or talking to students on a relevant topic.

A topical diversion

I have a second favourite piece – ‘significant to me’ would be a better way to think of it.

In 2020 I made a piece of work about the impact of coronavirus that was exhibited in the Chaiya Art Awards online exhibition Impact. I called this piece inhale/exhale. It was a one-off piece, a disruption to my then-current body of work. In a small way it was similar to the interruption and pausing of the world brought about by the pandemic. This piece completely absorbed me for a few weeks. It felt appropriate to spend time doing something different before returning to my current work.

I had pangs of guilt in creating this piece, making something to be aesthetically pleasing out of such a terrible world event seemed wrong in some ways, but as I stitched it helped me think through the issues we all had to confront.

Elisabeth Rutt, Textile artist

The artwork focuses on the breath of individuals and the world at that time, about the microscopic virus and the enormous effect it had on the planet. I darned motifs of the virus onto a piece of felt fabric I’d made but not used while I was suffering from whooping cough a few years earlier. It seemed somewhat ironic that it was made while I was struggling with my lungs and breath. I always knew it would come in useful for a piece of work at some time.

I used a circular format for inhale/exhale, which was a new approach for me. Stylised lungs appear within the blue circle, just as continents are seen on a satellite image of the earth. The bronchioles are reminiscent of roots, rivers, roads and communication networks, with the stitched pale patterns in the lungs indicating the presence of Covid-19. I wanted to include some of the new vocabulary that we all became familiar with. The words have a deliberate light touch, giving a corona of colour with a nod to the appearance of infographics in the data we were being presented with. 

The work was exhibited and sold during The Broderers’ Exhibition at Bankside Gallery, London in 2022.

Books to inspire

For inspiration, I think any textile artist would benefit by reading anything by Constance Howard or Kathleen Whyte, also Machine Stitch and Hand Stitch, both by Alice Kettle and Jane McKeating.

It’s also worth looking at Uppercase magazine, an independently published Canadian magazine about all things design, colour, and illustration. It’s a joy to read and look at, and, miraculously, is the work of Janine Vangool alone, who is the owner, editor, designer and publisher. It’s published every three months and although not a dedicated textile magazine, I would thoroughly recommend it to anyone interested in any area of the arts and crafts – it’s a visual feast.

A recognisable style

I’d advise any aspiring textile artist to focus on developing work that will set you apart and give you a recognisable style. Instead of asking ‘How have they done that?’, ask ‘Why and what have they done in that piece of work?’. I would advise looking at and soaking up design in many other disciplines. Good design is the core of successful work, whether it is furniture, architecture or jewellery. 

I would also recommend finding a group of peer artists to bounce ideas off of and critique each other’s work. Such a group gives great support and you will learn much from each other.

Plus, go to as many exhibitions as you can get to… (sadly I don’t get to enough!).

In the eyes of textile artist Kate Whitehead, there is beauty in all things. But Kate focuses her attention not on the obviously beautiful, but on the forgotten, the overlooked and the abandoned. Despairing at how textiles are consumed in Western society, as she witnesses clothing mindlessly dumped and an advertising industry that insists on imposing identities upon us, Kate’s work forges a rebellion in the opposite direction.

Kate favours slower processes as she embraces traditional methods of making. Her materials garnered from flea markets and car boot sales, are unwanted fragments of life to which she gives a second chance. They may be stained, ripped, tattered or torn, but Kate looks beyond these signs of age, salvaging the discarded and fixing the broken. Specialising in weaving and embroidery, Kate gives them renewed value, their own special place back in the world. Just as Thai monks once restored the forgotten clay Buddha to its original glory of gold, Kate’s form of repair offers these lost and forlorn items a chance to shine and give forth their natural beauty.

As Kate works with her choice of humble, quiet calicos and cottons – and interprets these materials into textile art – she reveals the narrative of her senses, her experiences and her life.

“I am a mother. I am a single parent. I am an artist. I’m in love. I am free.”

Kate Whitehead

True cost of textiles

Kate Whitehead: I’ve never felt at ease with high street consumerism and the ‘more more more’ attitude.

Our magazine image of life tells us more means better, and I’ve always had an awareness of this. During my textiles degree I watched a documentary called The True Cost, a groundbreaking documentary film by Andrew Morgan that pulls back the curtain on the untold story and asks us to consider – who really pays the price for our clothing? It hit home. It’s about the clothes we wear, the people who make them, and the impact the industry is having on our world. The price of clothing has been decreasing for decades, while the human and environmental costs have grown dramatically. The mixture of my outlook and this new found knowledge was what inspired my final collection for my degree, and it continues to inspire my art practice today.

Mainstream rebellion

My collections are created around a narrative. I use what I’m feeling at the time to influence my work. What I see and sense, mixed with what I’m going through in life, informs my narrative. I take my emotions and transfer them into cloth. I find it very therapeutic. These pieces often inspire the audience to share their stories too, creating a community of expression.

From age eleven, I’ve used a camera to take quick snap-happy photographs when I’ve been in cities. I’ve focused on colours, shapes, shadows, street art and buildings. Walking around, looking in shop windows, noticing what people are wearing, looking up, and looking down. This gives me a sense of what trends are coming. I then rebel against what’s going on in the mainstream.

My process is considered, thoughtful, ethereal and delicate. My rebellion is to go back to slower processes, embrace tradition, salvage the discarded, fix the broken.

My favourite piece of work I’ve made is hanging on my wall. It’s hand woven using salvaged silk and linen with indigo running through the weft. It was made for my Not From The Stork collection that was shown in the Knitting and Stitching Show at Alexandra Palace, London and Harrogate Convention Centre in 2018. It’s particularly precious to me as it was the last piece my father saw and loved before he died.

Naturally unloved

I source my materials from markets, flea markets and car boot sales, while on my trips and travels. I’m drawn towards items that haven’t been loved, nurtured and cared for, cloth mainly made from natural materials. I see something in them that I know I can bring into my practice and give them a place where they can be seen – whether it’s yarn, or fabric for a hand woven piece, or thread for embroidery. 

In my weaving and embroidery, I take time to imagine the history of every piece, exploring its hues and tones, examining its tears and frays, weighing up its foibles. Recent items I’ve found are a small loom at a car boot sale, metallic thread that I am using in hand woven pieces, and a vintage kimono.

“My aim is to find a place for these bits and pieces that catch my eye.”

I’ll create something so that they can shine and have a special place of their own, to be viewed and seen for the beauty that they possess. It’s like wanting the underdog to win, a feeling that these unwanted objects or pieces or fragments of life also deserve a special space. Maybe it’s part of my DNA, or that I’ve always been creative. It’s something I’ve always done.

Creative childhood

I was born in London, adopted and I lived in West Yorkshire until moving to Manchester, where I’m based now. As a child, I enjoyed dressing up and was lucky to have a dressing up box to play with. My favourite outfit was a tulle pink skirt and t-shirt. My other favourite outfit was a wig, a red skirt with rickrack trim, a bikini top and a scarf. 

I had a great imagination and enjoyed making things for dens. I gathered vases of flowers, made rose petal perfume, hung fabric at windows and painted stones. I collected old pottery dug up from the garden and used paint sample pots to decorate the roof. I loved cutting out paper outfits for my paper dolls. As a young teenager, I enjoyed eating cubes of jelly and would throw it onto the ceiling and let it stick. I painted my bedroom with luminous green paint and used glittery nail varnish to decorate the door handles. My walls were full of images from magazines of bands, graphic designs and tickets from gigs. I made most of my clothes, choosing fabric from the local market or off-cuts from my father’s textile mill. 

Occasionally I would save up and buy pieces from Camden Market, and hair dye from X Clothes in Leeds. One of my all time favourite pieces of clothing was a calico skirt with bold black marker pen marks on it. I loved workwear and anything androgynous if I could find my size from the army and navy stores.

Juggling life and creativity

Mum noticed I was good at making things and that I had a good eye for colour and composition. I’d left school with little in the way of qualifications, so she encouraged me to go to the local art school. 

School was never the right fit for me, whereas art school was. I did a Foundation in Art and Design at Keighley College for a year and thrived in that environment. From there I went to Bradford School of Art and did a Diploma in Jewellery through Art and Design. It was a brilliant course. I juggled working hard, designing and making jewellery and travelling up and down the country going to gigs. 

When I finished the course, I worked for two jewellers for two years before setting up my own jewellery business. I had a stall at The Ridings Shopping Centre in Wakefield every weekend. I sold my silver jewellery there. I would take orders for different sizes of rings and bracelets, make them during the week and then sell them on my stall at the weekend. 

I did that until I got pregnant – my daughter was born when I was just 22. I had my son two and a half years later and was a single mum when he was three months old. They were, and still are, my everything. 

Being left with a baby and a toddler meant I had to put my creativity on hold. I found work in a clothes shop and after a while the head of display and window dressing noticed I had a creative eye. I spent three years on my day off from my part time job doing my British Display Technician Certificate at Bradford School of Art. I was juggling work, studying and caring for my children. I was young enough and enthusiastic enough to make it work.

When the course finished I worked as a freelance display technician in shops, creating window displays, merchandising and visuals for the shop floor.

“Even back then, as a jeweller and display technician before doing my textiles degree, I’ve always worked with a rebellion against consumption.”

Discovering love of weave

Let’s fast forward to when I met my partner, who supported me to do my degree in Contemporary Surface Design and Textiles at Bradford School of Art, completed in 2013. My children had finished school, were doing courses and flying the nest. My degree helped with the emptiness I felt as they found their own happy paths. 

I loved every minute of my degree and, having put my creativity on hold whilst my children were growing up, it was heaven to be able to express myself through art. I worked hard and gave it my all. 

In the second year of the degree, we were taught to weave. We started on table top looms, learning to work out the different patterns and use different yarns. I had an instant connection with weave. Something just clicked. I loved using ideas that came to me and the physical rhythm of my hands to create woven pieces. It gave a sense of calm and was the perfect space for the soul to settle.

“Creative weaving equals rhythm – using head, heart and hands.”

With creative weaving, like a blank page, you’re never quite sure what the result is going to be. If patterns are created in a more mathematical way, you know what the outcome is going to be. That, for me, takes away the excitement and possibilities of what can be.

In the third year of my degree, I specialised in weave and embroidery. I had a passion for using fabric, yarn and materials that nobody wanted. This, and my love of combining colour with creativity (without using mathematical patterns), helped me to win awards, including first prize in the Holland & Sherry award for a woven fabric in any fibre or blend, and four from the Clothworkers’ Foundation. Having won a sponsorship from the embroidery thread manufacturer Madeira, embroidery is also a constant in my practice.

Beauty of poor materials

The fashion students would use calico to make toiles that I thought were beautiful. When they had used them to get the right design for their garments, they would sometimes throw them in the bin. I often preferred the toiles to the finished garment made in more luxurious fabric. I took these unwanted toiles, dyed them in indigo and stitched into them. That, and my eye for unwanted materials, formed my final collection in my degree, which I called the ‘Beauty of Poor Materials’.

This collection comprised hand woven and embroidered pieces using materials and yarn that I’d found. It included a kimono I made from found material, over-dyed and embroidered. There was a second hand chest of drawers with hand woven, embroidered and printed pieces, and a chair I found and restored, making a hand woven seat.

While working on the kimono, I was introduced to Boro, a class of Japanese textiles that have been mended or patched together. The term is derived from the Japanese term ‘boroboro’, meaning something tattered or repaired. Boro textiles are typically dyed with indigo dyestuff, historically having been the cheapest and easiest to grow dyestuff available to the lower classes.

I dyed areas of my final degree collection with indigo, madder and nettle. I continue to use this concept, dyeing areas of materials or yarns that are stained, worn, or perhaps not quite the right colour for the piece I’m working on. 

I don’t grow my own natural dyes: my practice and the work I produce is a slow enough process. I buy the dyes online and make my own dye vats.

Becoming an artist

I was awarded a first class honours degree and, along with my fellow graduates, I showed my collection at New Designers in Islington. Also known as the London graduate design show, it’s the annual showcase of the UK’s most innovative and emerging design talent. My work was selected by Selvedge magazine to be displayed in their shop window in Archway, London. 

From there I was selected for shows and exhibitions, and I went on to study Print and Weave at the University of the Arts London Central Saint Martins – Dual City Istanbul & London. But after exhibiting at shows for three years, something wasn’t sitting right. I gained a place on the Crafts Council’s Hothouse 2016 programme. Delivered over six months, it was designed to support talented artists and makers at the start of their career. This gave me the opportunity to define my textile practice and identity.

“The Hothouse programme mentoring unravelled my practice. It gave me a stronger creative identity and the realisation that I’m an artist, rather than a maker.”

Since then I have been exhibiting and selling pieces I show, and I’ve been invited to teach workshops in the UK, France and Morocco.

Film collaboration

Being closely affiliated to Bradford School of Art, I’ve been the AA2A (Artist Access to Art Colleges) artist in residence in 2020/21 and again in 2023/24, for a film I’ve been collaborating on with Alex Crystal. In 2021 I was a creative technician on a film he directed, The fight and flight of non-saint Henry. I have huge admiration for Alex and in January 2022 we decided to make a film based on my textile practice. Our first year was spent working without a budget. As time went on, family and friends helped out too – it became an incredible collaboration.

The film is called Kate and we completed it in 2023. I plan to create large print pieces to show with the film at an event at the School of Arts. Hopefully I will be able to show the film in other venues, too. 

I believe my artistic emphasis comes from a mixture of having an empathetic nature, an artist’s eye and looking out for all that can be given a second chance in the world. I’m delighted that my textile art is going to be available to a wider audience who may share in that ideal.

She specialises in free motion embroidery and textiles and delights in depicting the unexpected. Whether it’s pushing boundaries of scale – embellishing the façade of her house with a huge textile for example – or capturing the intimacy of a mother nursing her baby.

Alison shares how she has learnt the value of taking risks. She actively creates and seizes opportunities in order to develop her work and grow as an artist, as well as support others. She relishes the freedom of working in mixed media and her work is constantly evolving because of this.

Whether it’s learning a new technique or exploring different materials to bring a particular idea to life, embarking on an overseas residency or co-founding a community textiles festival, Alison’s process is one of making by doing and experimenting – and the results speak for themselves.

Alison Carpenter Hughes: I am inspired by so many different things and I hate to tie myself down to any particular element. 

“I feel drawn to how transient life can be, and creating a connection with a second of time that perhaps reveals vulnerability and intimacy.

I am capturing a moment, knowing it is going to pass away.”

I’m inspired by process and understanding of the materials I use. I enjoy the challenge of working with new materials and techniques. This is combined with the pleasure of learning and knowing that I’m creating a ‘brain store’ to work from, that I can come back to, if needed, on a future project.

I am also regularly drawn to birds and eyes, aesthetically and symbolically, as well as dreams, words, lines from songs, poems and books, all of which spark off ideas.

I am interested in taking textiles out of the gallery to more unexpected places.

In the last few years, I have been commissioned independently and collaboratively for large scale works, such as Vehicle Arts, Up Your Street project, where I transformed the entire front of my house into an art installation Blooming Lovely and the Heritage Action Zone/LCB Depot Beta X space, where I created a 12 metre (39ft) textile mural A Stitch In Time, on the front of the building.

In 2023–4 I was involved with an installation taking over a large shopping centre unit with a number of textile and repurposed interactive scenes.

Over the last couple of years, I have worked on some big public commissions and projects, which have taken up a lot of time and energy. Creating the odd smaller project such as a bird has been a fall-out space to enjoy making without pressure.

“I find most creating has some form of problem solving that drives me to despair, but the process can be quite satisfying once worked through.”

Planning

I have so many ideas running through my head and one of the joys of working on commissions, either public or private, is that it helps me think outside of the box in a way I might not have done if I hadn’t been working on that project.

I enjoy doing a lot of research on commissions to become as informed as I can be before deciding on a design. Generally, I don’t have a development process. I’ll have an idea and then start making it, working out any challenges as I go along.

I am lackadaisical with using sketchbooks. I sometimes use them – or scraps of paper – for brainstorming, or to record a word or line from a song or a book I’m reading. I occasionally make very badly drawn doodles or a collage of an idea which I’ll come back to. However, for the most part, I carry it all around in my head and will keep turning it over, or something will set-off an impulse of an idea strongly enough until eventually, I start making it.

Making

I use different methods to get my design together. I might draw with charcoal, pastels or pencils onto brown packing paper, before transferring the design onto fabric using different techniques.

Sometimes, if it’s a smaller work I will draw straight onto fabric. I often only need a simple drawing because, once I start sewing I work out the stitch and colour detail by eye as I go along.

Before starting a piece, I take the time to go through whatever materials and colours I’m considering using. I enjoy the process of sifting and sorting – I like deciding if something will work or whether I need to take another approach.

As I work with all types of materials, I usually have to stabilise the fabric in some way, such as with canvas, water-soluble stabiliser or interfacing.

As I’m making, I spend a lot of time carefully observing the image I’m working from. I often step back from the piece and take photos as this helps me if anything needs changing. 

I work with various techniques such as free motion embroidery, standard hand and machine sewing, appliqué, basic patchwork, hand embroidery, tufting, basic weaving, felting, soft 3D sculpture, French knitting and acrylic painting. I’m mostly working out how to do things as I proceed.

“With free motion embroidery, sometimes less is more: less stitching and less density.

Working subtly can be more effective visually.

It also reduces the impact on the nature of the material I’m working on, so there are fewer problems to sort out.”

Persevering

A number of my pieces have been challenging but Little Connie stands out. It was a true labour of love to create, taking about a month to complete all the sewing. There was quite a long gap between starting and finishing it.

I had used a lot of yellow for the base colour, and the baby started to look like a jaundiced Mini-Me! The nose had to be redone three times. Unpicking the threads by hand was a nightmare as the denser the free motion stitches became, the harder they were to undo and the fabric below started to disintegrate.

“I set it aside for a month as I needed time to step back, to feel less frustrated and see it with fresh eyes.

It really helped to take some time away and create some other artworks – when I worked on it again I finished it quickly and without further issues.”

At that time I was a relative beginner to free motion embroidery so every new piece was a steep learning curve. There was an element of a happy accident in each one.

The sewn threads became so thickly layered on Little Connie it was impossible to use an embroidery hoop, so the piece started to attain a natural curvature. The dense sewing changes the structure of fabric.

I loved this element and worked with it further while sewing and in the finishing process. It adds to the three-dimensional presence of the baby. 

Little Connie is a deeply sentimental creation of a family member, but it was also my totem that year. It opened doors and brought unexpected opportunities for me, including two awards.

I completed Little Connie in 2018 and as it has spent quite a lot of time being in exhibitions. Each time I’ve seen it afresh, I have had the strangest feeling.

I can remember making it – particularly all the frustrations I had – but there is also a disconnect, as though someone else made it.

Experimenting

There are always some pieces that I feel happier with than others. A favourite is Kissed by Neon Lights because it was technically interesting to create and in a style I’d not used before. I work in collaboration with Aurifil as one of their Artisans.

I enjoy their challenges because, as with my commissions, I have to work to a brief, which makes me consider factors beyond the norm. For this project, Aurifil gave me three of their Tula Neon threads to try out and on this occasion, my brain went on a wild walk.

Neon made me think of the future and science fiction. Then I started to visualise a cross between the android character Rachael in the film Blade Runner and Miss Scarlett from the board game Cluedo (known as Clue in the US), both with their stylised hairstyles.

I remembered that the characters on the Cluedo playing cards look strangely elongated, like board game pieces. 

One of my nieces is an actress and was very obliging in letting me use her as the model.

I wanted the neon threads to contrast against the subject so I considered what colour might do this. Vladimir Tretchikoff’s Chinese Girl with her blue skin was then thrown into the mix. So I settled on blue. 

I used a wallpaper design as inspiration to create a neon pattern behind the portrait and used the brightest neon a bit like a halo around the figure.

“The neon really makes the portrait pop.”

Elements of the pink base fabric show under the blue of the skin. The blue is stark against the neon, and the red lips and the texture of the stitch contrast with the flatness of the appliqué.

I love how the work can look three-dimensional and flat at the same time, depending on the angle it’s viewed from.

By the time I made this piece, my embroidery technique had improved. I discovered better ways of dealing with issues such as warping.

It was a joyous and fun piece to create, and it currently sits on my studio desk waiting to be framed – I’ve not quite decided what is best for it yet. It makes me smile whenever I see it.

Focusing

My first residency was at StudionAme in Leicester. I was made redundant in 2016 and decided to work part-time for a while. I started to paint and do photography again and wanted to feel more involved in the local art scene, so I applied for a job working in an independent cinema and arts centre.

I was also looking for art events to attend. I spotted a Facebook post about the residency and applied, writing about a project I wanted to do and why. A short time later, I was asked for examples of my work.

I had virtually no work to show and so I did lots of drawing for the deadline a week later. I was over the moon to be selected after an interview.

The residency began in January 2018. I had free studio space for six months, critical support, a stipend for materials and a solo show at the end of it. It was a particularly bad winter and there was even snow in the studio.

However, despite being absolutely freezing, it was a wonderful experience to be given the time and space to be creative in any way I wanted. 

As well as guidance and support from the studio directors, Yuka Namekawa and Steven Allbutt, the other artists working at the studio were also incredibly generous with their time, energy and advice. It was a lovely, nurturing environment for someone just starting out.

“During this time, I made very personal pieces that I am still proud of.

I developed my style of free motion embroidery and it gave me the chance to network with many people, which led to further opportunities.”

Travelling

My work at StudionAme led to a two-month stay in Tokyo, at 3331 Arts Chiyoda, an arts centre and studio (now closed). I’d wanted to visit Japan since I was 14 years old when I was given an antique dressing gown by my sister that had been my great grandmother’s.

It was a silk patterned kimono-style gown, which would have been bought at the height of the Japonisme trend. Since I was a teenager, I’ve been hugely inspired by artists such as Klimt, Bonnard and Van Gogh, who were also influenced by Japanese art and design. 

At StudionAme, I knew exactly what I wanted to work on as soon as I started the residency. But in Tokyo, although I had researched thoroughly and planned to follow particular interests, concepts and cultural experiences on arrival, I had not really factored in how certain elements of a residency abroad would affect me.

I had jet lag. I had to learn to navigate the city and cope with a new culture, language and different foods, all while living with strangers from other countries.

“I started to explore straight away, seeing and experiencing amazing things.

I felt a slight sense of panic that I wasn’t sure how I would fit everything into my art practice.”

Although I was gathering and absorbing inspirational material on a daily basis, it did take time before I knew what to do with all this information.

There is so much to experience in Tokyo alone. Certain events and trips really stand out, filled with moments of adventure, joy, breath-taking beauty and plain bizarre. Local festivals gave me some of my favourite moments.

The sound of school band parades; small children holding hands singing; people dressed up in traditional costumes, some playing folk instruments with flutes, bells, pieces of wood and drums – some of the music lively and some meditative, but all with an almost hypnotic energy.

There was an explosion of colour and pattern in the exquisite costumes. The definitive element of these festivals, however, was the sense of community in such a massive city.

The few trips I made out of the city were also some of my favourite days. Kamakura and Enoshima are two of many beautiful places that run along the Enoden electric railway line, where the train is essentially like the little train from the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away.

There is an abundance of cherry blossoms, shrines and temples, walks in the hills and views of the sea. I visited the area twice and still didn’t manage to see everything.

It was all wonderful but particular places, such as Hasedera Temple in Hase, stood out. It’s built into the side of a hill, with stone steps and cute Jizo stone figures that protect children in the afterlife, as well as hundreds of other stone statues in all sizes.

There were waterfalls, ponds full of Koi carp, multitudes of flowers, forests of greenery, amazing views and caves to explore – all added to the feeling of being somewhere otherworldly. Getting to Enoshima on the first trip, just as the sun was setting over Mount Fuji was magical and moving. I watched it until the last bit of sunlight had disappeared.

Collecting ephemera

As well as constantly taking photographs, I picked up lots of ephemera on my trips out. I collected what others might see as rubbish, to use as a visual resource and incorporate into mixed media work, for collage in my sketchbook and for my textile pieces.

“My aim was to create multi-layered imagery that I would work over with free motion embroidery.”

I enjoyed hunting for resources to use in my work at the flea market held at the Ohi Racecourse, just a ride away on the monorail.

I purchased vintage kimono, obis and haori (a man’s garment) for about a pound each, plus old maps and postcards and kitsch ornaments. I also had the chance to learn a little sashiko, a traditional hand sewing technique meaning ‘little stabs’.

Near the end of my visit, I was able to try SAORI freestyle hand weaving, using a small loom with no rules and restrictions. Unlike traditional hand weaving, where weavers value the regularity and cleanness of the woven cloth, in SAORI more importance is placed on free expression. Irregularities are embraced and become a celebration of individuality. 

I have a wealth of material from my time in Tokyo, which I am still working with and I hope will become part of new work in the future.

Growing

I discovered a lot about myself personally and professionally while away. Living with artists from other cultures was stimulating. I enjoyed the artistic dialogue and sharing of perspectives. It helped to have the camaraderie of others who were having similar experiences.

Although I met and got to know different people, essentially you are on your own – pushed out of your comfort zone, often exploring by yourself and experiencing a sense of alienation because of cultural and language differences.

It was a case of Me, Myself and I, and there was no escape from that. It was an emotional experience, cathartic, but also very liberating.

The residency was extremely rewarding. I was able to give full attention to my creative practice, with none of the normal everyday distractions. I was able to take risks, explore, experiment and conceive new projects.

It created other opportunities, some of them unexpected, including presenting my work to new audiences through exhibitions, talks, teaching, networking and writing, which helped to raise my profile.

Additionally, it focused my thoughts on professional development and how I could progress in creating a sustainable art career on my return to the UK.

As an artist, you need to build resilience. If there is an area you feel is lacking, such as self-esteem, motivation, organisation, networking, then find ways to work on it, to help you move forward professionally and creatively.

I’m naturally quite shy and I struggle with all of the above,  but I keep exploring ways I can improve, for example through reading, mentoring, training and online videos.

“I force myself to face issues and go for the things I’m interested in. It can be slow, but it does start to pay off.”

Early influences

I loved creating from an early age. When I was small my mum gave me a drawer in the kitchen that brimmed with pens, pencils and the computer paper ends my dad brought home from work.

She kept the wallpaper collage cards I made at school and came to all my events up until she passed. My mum was my champion in so many ways.

Both my parents were avid readers and my dad wrote me poems and stories. They took me to museums, historic buildings and galleries.

I come from an absolutely huge sprawling family that loved to socialise and dance, so I feel these elements all add to a rich mix influencing my imagination and love of words.

“My direct family also has a strong interest in a spiritual, non-material and alternative side of life, which has definitely shaped my view of the world and leaning towards symbolism.”

A slow burn

I completed my Fine Art degree in the 1990s but I married and had a child soon after graduating so my main focus became raising my son.

I have had a varied career path, working in other areas until I decided to become a full-time artist in 2021. I have participated in exchanges living abroad in the US and Canada, as a student and when my son was small.

I didn’t do anything with my creative practice for a long time. In 2016, I took a weekly two-hour creative textiles course and asked the teacher if she could show me how to do free motion embroidery. It was a big, busy class, so she got me started but I have been self-taught since. 

I didn’t really do much with it until the beginning of 2018 when I won the residency at StudionAme and started to create partial portraits in stitch, which the directors of the studio encouraged me to take further.

I’ve learnt other textile techniques since, mostly through self-exploration, apart from tufting, which I did a day course in.

“Try to follow what feels right to you but realise how much you can learn from others.”

My advice

It’s really helpful to learn business and marketing skills. A freelance artist needs to be able to juggle many different aspects along with the creative side. 

Plan ahead and strategise – I’m still working on this one. If you want to be consistent with time, energy and finance, forward planning is so important.

Where do you want to be heading? What do you want to be doing? What do you want to be making? Who do you want to collaborate with?

Keep looking forward and give yourself time to plan future projects while you are working on a current project.

“You have to create your own opportunities and events.

Don’t sit around waiting for others to do something.

Do it yourself.”

It’s a huge learning curve; it can be massively challenging and it might not always work. But it can also help you get out there, meet people, open up possibilities of new projects and create something of worth, not just for you, but for other people too.

Co-founding and organising the Textiles Takeover events and the Leicester Textiles Festival have opened up creative and work opportunities for lots of individuals and have brought together people in the community, allowing them to see creativity in a new way.

Exploring

Because I focus on materials and process, I feel my work is continually evolving. Although a lot of my work is created through free motion embroidery, as with subject matter, I hate being pinned down to just one technique.

I want to give myself the freedom to explore different textile techniques, such as tufting. One day I might go back to drawing and painting. I’m still learning a lot with free motion though, particularly using new materials and improving my technique.

With big projects, such as the textiles festival or working on community projects, I get to exercise another side of myself, including the organising and event planning.

“As a freelance artist, one can get caught up in the mechanics of making a living, so I’ve made a resolution to reverse a little.

I want to rediscover the connection and freedom I found in my work during my residencies, to create a new body of work.”

I’m looking forward to working on more personal pieces that have been brewing in my head the last few years. These will explore different elements of myself and will cover aspects of relationships, female sensuality, ageing, grief and mental health.

It’s no surprise that Olga creates artwork with a sense of pure freedom and fantasy. Heralding from a background of six ethnicities and four religions, she grew up instilled with the ability to navigate a broad range of realities and cultures – experiences that have encouraged her unique ideas.

Her one-of-a-kind artwork ranges from multi-layered wall sculptures to textile and fibre installations. And her materials are just as diverse. Olga is as enchanted by a vintage scrap of lace as by an odd length of used fishing rope. To her, it’s all inspiration waiting to happen. No wonder her pieces embody a playful fairy tale quality that captivates her audience. 

Born in Moscow and now living in Rome, she delights in the rich choice of materials readily available to her in the Eternal City. So much so, that Olga has developed a fascination with the artefact: a precious art object made up of layers of textile collage, and often incorporating hand embroidery, crochet and weave.

Her artworks, she tells us, come with an invitation to touch. And we’re in no doubt that her installations transform the space they occupy, creating a fairytale scene for grown-ups, transporting them to a new dimension.

Take a look at Olga’s magical worlds of discovery, crafted from her own heart, mind and hands.

Tactile therapy

Olga Teksheva: What attracts me to textile art is its connection to reality, and to the sense of touch. Working with threads and textiles anchors me to this world and somehow gives me calm and security.

Changing career

I worked in fashion from 1993 to 2015, first as a fashion journalist, then, after graduating in fashion design in Italy, as an assistant to the director of an haute couture atelier in Rome. Later, I collaborated as a textile designer with various designers and brands. I was absolutely in love with the fashion of the 1990s. It was creative, often very experimental and intellectual, a real form of art.

“The more I worked on different projects, the more it became clear that I prefer to practise crafting things – to embroider, to crochet, to drape – than to simply draw clothes for fashion brands.”

After my fashion and costume design course, I started to study traditional embroidery – techniques like beading with satin ribbons. Later, I took different courses in crochet and knitting, learning various traditional techniques, though I didn’t want my own work to be traditional. I prefer to experiment with materials and measurements. 

For example, the trees in the Once Upon a Time There Was a Fish Sitting on a Tree installation are crocheted with a giant hook, but the material I used is light fibres. The cocoons for the Hidden Treasures installation are crocheted in quite a traditional way, but the fibres are various coloured fishing threads. Here in Italy it’s a paradise for textile artists, since it’s so rich in textile manipulation traditions and high quality materials.

I spent a period doing pure research, asking questions like ‘What happens if I crochet a thick rope?’and ‘What if I make an irregular and gigantic cross-stitch?’. Then one day a friend told me it all looked like contemporary art, rather than haute couture. 

At that time I discovered TextileArtist.org, containing fascinating interviews with international artists. It was so inspiring and was the turning point that convinced me to dedicate myself to textile art. My work as a textile artist today is thanks to the endeavours of this website!

“I realised that this was the perfect arena for my work, involving so much reflection, research, creativity and resulting in pure contemporary art.”

History and mythology

My specialism when studying at Moscow State University was Japanese Medieval Art. I’m also influenced by the graphic qualities of Japanese decorative paintings, the capacity of stylizing a natural object to make it look plain, and attention given to the rhythm of the lines. I also use lots of Japanese textiles, both modern and vintage.

Everybody asks me why I don’t live in Japan if I’m so enchanted with Japanese art. I guess I prefer to keep Japan as another magic dimension – one to enter occasionally, but definitely not to spoil with everyday life.

Roman influences

I came to Rome for the first time in 2007 and fell in love with the Eternal City. I moved here in 2008. Its Baroque aspect is dear to everything I do, with all of its theatricality, its drama of light and shadows, and its unbelievable perspectives in frescoes. 

But I’m mostly connected to the history of this place – I’m talking about 3500 years ago when it wasn’t a city and not even yet a town. My series Realm on Rocks (a branch of the project Rocks. We Are Tender) is dedicated to the mythological kings, Pico the Woodpecker and Fauno the Wolf, as well as to the ancient deities Giano (Janus) and Terminus. 

During my research for this series, I discovered that, somehow, ancient pre-Romans knew about the big bang theory, since the meaning of Janus is the starting point of the world that goes into expansion: it’s the beginning of time, of light and darkness. Pico is the embodiment of order, and Fauno is that of chaos – neither can exist without the other. It reminds me of Hegel’s philosophy, except these concepts were born around the 14th-13th centuries BC.

Other-worldly fantasy

An important influence on my work is a memory from my grandmother’s sister, who was practising ancient shamanistic rituals in the 1970s when I was a child. This episode, when I was four years old, was about a ‘guardian rock’ and it inspired my future installations. 

There was a huge piece of rock at the edge of the wood, and the local kids told me it was a gate to the home of the guardian of the wood. They said if I didn’t behave well, the guardian would send a huge bear to take me away. I had only seen bears in Moscow Zoo, so when nobody was looking, I would go to the rock, delicately knock on it and say: ‘So sorry to disturb you, but I really want to see a bear. He must be so cute and fluffy! Please, please, please show me a bear!’. When I confessed my requests to my grandmother, she burst out laughing and told me: ‘Oh, but you’re such a good girl! He won’t send you a bear, not even if you ask him!’

“That experience of an object as a magic gate into a magical world has remained with me forever. And that’s why I try to create an atmosphere with this other-worldly dimension within my installations.”

I remember a fantastic episode during the Rome Art Rooms fair in 2019. I had mounted my Appearing/Disappearing installation inside a Ford van. It looked especially enchanting after sunset, since the interior of the van was black, and there were two theatre-like light devices that highlighted the shiny fishing thread that I’d used to crochet the trees. 

One evening I saw a visitor slowly putting his arm inside the installation and then taking it out again. When I asked him what he was doing, he rewarded me with the reply: ‘Well, I thought if I put my arm into this other dimension it would transform somehow … and come out kind of green and furry.’

That was the best compliment I’ve ever had for my artwork!

Creating complexity

I like complicated things. The world of our feelings, thoughts and emotions is composed of so many layers of shades. I believe this complexity is precious because it makes a whole universe of every person.

My artworks are multi-layered, often made of precious vintage fabrics. Every art piece is a one-of-a-kind experience: there would only have been one small piece of a rare silk or brocade, or a small amount of vintage thread or lace, that I had available to use. 

In recent years, when I’ve talked to art critics or gallerists they’ve told me that people want simple things. I find this desire for simplicity hugely disappointing. It might be revolutionary during the postmodernist period, but I see it as a lack of desire to contemplate something here and now, to experience a moment or a work of art with undivided attention.

I remember a particular Renaissance art object, it was very elaborate, both intellectually and from the artisanal point of view. It was an artwork that had to be learnt about to be understood and fully appreciated. I’m afraid we’ve lost this need for quality of depth in an art object. 

Interactive playground

“My installations are meant to be a kind of playground for grown-ups, a space where one can abandon his or her seriousness and social status, and feel like Alice in Wonderland.”

My main field of work is textile and fibre installations. I try to create an atmosphere that invites people to interact with these art objects, but people often come to shows believing they can’t touch a work of art and therefore need encouragement to do so. 

During art shows, I’m always available to talk to the visitors about ideas behind my installations and sculptures, and I notice the difference in reaction between those who listen to my explanation and those who don’t, saying ‘No thank you, I’m sure the art speaks for itself’. 

I accept their purely visual interaction with an art piece, but I feel the more you learn, the more you see. That’s why I like to learn more about spheres of art that are totally different from what I do, such as the performance art of Marina Abramovich or minimalism of Donald Judd. Learning about something that is totally at odds with your own vision and point of view helps to develop new visions of art, and those of other people.

“Textiles are such a rich material and they permit me to express being multi-layered and complex to the maximum.”

Favourite Project

It’s so hard to say which project is my favourite. I was told I shouldn’t see my artworks as children, but so far that’s beyond me. Every ‘child’ is my favourite. But, if I had to choose, I would say it’s the Hidden Treasures installation. It consists of crocheted cocoons of various shapes and colours, each with some holes in it. They are hanging from the ceiling, and visitors are free to hug every cocoon, to find the best hole to look inside to discover where a hand-embroidered butterfly wing is hidden. 

I love this project because it’s so much fun to see people who are hugging the cocoons, looking inside and letting themselves go, just like little kids in search of their tiny treasures. I love it because it’s so life-affirming.

This installation is born out of child’s play. When I was a girl on summer vacations at my grandmother’s, my friends and I would put items like a butterfly wing, a beautiful dry petal, a hair clip lost by who-knows-who (but surely a fairy!), and other such treasures, in an empty metal confectionery box. 

We would bury the box of treasures in the garden that surrounded our apartment block, with the intention of digging it up the year after. But I never did manage to find my treasures, however much I dug to find them. They’re a faint memory now, together with my grandmother’s face, the light in her house, and the smell of cakes she would cook for me. Something full of both joy and melancholy all at the same time.

A personal response

I have a deep respect for artists who dedicate themselves to the battle for human rights, but I’m not an art activist myself; I belong to a world of dreams and deities. However, as an exception, I created Silence Covers Violence. It was in response to the FORGETME(K)NOT group show at the Museum of Embroidery and Textiles at Valtopina, a show dedicated to the neglected rights of women. 

I learnt about this project while my daughter was fighting back against bullying by two of her female classmates. What struck me most was the silence of kids who were ashamed to talk to their parents, the silence of the parents who knew, and the silence of the teachers who dismissed it, saying that happens among girls. I found it incredible: 15 kids felt uncomfortable at school and everybody was silencing the problem. 

Silence Covers Violence consists of a thin transparent chiffon with the word SILENCE embroidered on it, mounted on top of BULLYING embroidered in red threads. The red letters are shouting from beneath the top layer, just as the real life trauma of bullying can’t be hidden by pretending nothing is happening.

On rare occasions, I do integrate some personal experiences into a more abstract project. For example, the series Rocks. We Are Tender was born in the last months of 2020 after I heard the post-Covid stories from my relatives and friends all around the world. They were stories of the fear of getting ill and the fear of being locked in at home, stories of uncertainty for the future and stories of hope. 

I saw my dear people as rocks that managed to resist that stress, but those rocks were so fragile, so tender. The series was born out of that personal emotion, but from a formal point of view the artworks are inspired by the colours and textures of minerals and rocks that I photographed in different regions of Italy.

A taste of curating

I’m a member of the Society for Embroidered Work (SEW) and was honoured to participate in their first international show in London in 2019. Their second show was held in Rome in 2021, and I was one of the three curators. I graduated as an art historian and studied curating, so I was curious to see what would come out of that new art experience. 

I proposed the theme Surface and Depth since people mostly imagine a decorative surface when they hear of embroidery. So I asked our artists to submit either 3D projects or interesting examples of surface design in embroidery. All three curators were amazed by the outcome. We had sculptures, installations and various draped artworks – even an embroidered paint brush and an embroidery panel made from an aluminium can. The show was a huge success with people coming to explore the infinite possibilities of contemporary embroidery and textile art.

For that show, I started Hidden Treasures. It’s my most important installation to date and one I’m continuing to work on.

Future plans

I’m fortunate to have been brought up in a family that comprised six different ethnicities and four different religions. But I’m afraid there’s a lot of misunderstanding and violence towards people of other cultures because of a lack of learning about them. It’s the same with art. 

In 2022, I was supposed to take part in a group show in Paris, and I was supposed to have a personal show in Amsterdam and many group projects in Italy. When the military operation in Ukraine broke out, that same day I got many emails and phone calls from gallerists and curators. Basically, everybody was saying the same thing: ‘I appreciate your work so much, but you are Russian and I’m afraid to exhibit you’. 

I’ve experienced scenes like arriving at my local shop only to be greeted with shouting: ‘Out, out, no Russians here!’. I’ve experienced the partial blocking of my bank account because I was Russian, and it took a few months to unblock it. I didn’t feel like making any plans after that.

As an artist and as a person, I’m for life, because it’s the highest gift a human being has. Every life is precious and it’s my wish that people would appreciate that more. Respect for another’s life has to be a personal choice for each of us.

“I just know one thing: I’m an artist, art is my life, and I will go on with my work. I’m working on Hidden Treasures, also working on the second piece of a new series inspired by the shamanistic shields, and I’m already planning the next series after that.”

Now she can’t imagine doing anything else and has a lifetime of ideas waiting in the wings to express through stitch. She is passionate about exploring the potential of thread – experimenting with direction to manipulate light and colour, and create texture.

Heehwa has embraced her country’s rich tradition of embroidery and made a point of studying it in detail. She shares how she has learnt to see beyond the surface and notice the design principles and invisible ‘rules’ that were followed – and sometimes broken – by ancient embroiderers, whether stitching for family or the royal court. 

Heehwa keeps these traditions alive and shares how she uses these techniques – and channels the spirit in which they were made – recreating historic artefacts that are an integral part of Korea’s cultural heritage.

Heehwa’s nickname, JOHH, which she uses on social media, is derived from the Korean format of her name, which shows the surname first and the given name last, Jo Heehwa.

Heehwa Jo: My work is based on traditional Korean stitch techniques and subjects. I’m interested in generating ideas within traditional principles and adding my own creative take on it. I’ve got two ways of working with my embroidery. One is doing embroidery based on historic pieces. I do this for my own self-development, as well as preserving the traditional skills. The other is creating embroidery with my own stamp on it in pursuit of the trinity of craft: aesthetic, utility and meaning. 

I am particularly fond of the texture made by stitches and I try to make an impact purely by using threads. Whenever I’m talking about or teaching Korean embroidery, I always emphasise that embroidery is the art of stitches and its language is threads. Traditional Korean embroidery uses mainly sheen silk twisted thread, which creates texture and reflects light and colour.

“The direction of the stitch creates very different textural effects. If you fill in an identical shape using the same stitch and thread, it will look different depending on the direction of the stitch because of the way the light reflects on it. The more lustrous the thread, the more distinctive the difference.”

Heewha Jo, Textile artist

Creating impact with thread

“It’s really important to know the characteristics of thread in relation to the levels of twist and stitch directions. Then you can plan a design and process according to your intention. That is what really intrigues me, regardless of the tradition.”

Heewha Jo, Textile artist

My goal is the ultimate expression of threads – something that I’m working towards mastering through practice and experimentation. That’s why I cherish and value thread – just as a sculptor makes the most of marble, and a cook their ingredients. Of course, I care about colours and design composition as well, but they are not unique to embroidery. 

I love using traditional Korean embroidery stitches, and I’m keen on showing their distinctive features. Although many Korean stitch techniques are the same, or similar to, stitches from other countries (albeit with different names), the act of stitching is a combination of techniques, materials, colours, usage and so on. These distinct characteristics are specific to different cultures.

In traditional Korean embroidery, certain stitch techniques are often closely associated with particular elements. For example, Jarit-su (a kind of brick stitch) is normally combined with twisted thread rather than half-twisted thread. Neukkim-su (it’s hard to find the equivalent but it’s a row of sparse stitches on top of satin stitches) was commonly used in embroidery done by ordinary people. While Jingguem-su (couching or goldwork), traditionally was mainly used by professional embroiderers working for nobles or the royal family, although individuals sometimes used it, albeit in different ways.

On the shoulders of giants

My work is a collaboration between myself and those who have come before me. It is a combination of their wisdom and my creativity. It is physically and spiritually connected to traditional Korean embroidery, particularly from Joseon dynasty (1392­-1897). Nearly all existing Korean embroidery pieces are from this period.

I often make replicas of ancient artefacts. While I’m recreating the pieces I try to empathise with the original makers. I imagine their circumstances and what they might have been thinking so that I can connect with their spirit and understand their way of approaching the work.

“For instance, when I look at a piece of historic embroidery, rather than just reproducing the colour itself, I like to study it and take away how the different colours have been combined. After studying many pieces over and over, I realised that it is the way the colours are organised that matters.”

Heewha Jo, Textile artist

For example, you might see a historic design with a pair of four semi-concentric water waves in different shades of one colour. At first glance they seem to be the expected colour gradations from dark to light, yet when you look more closely, they are not. One might go from dark green to light green and then to yellow, instead of the expected lighter green. Another, which is overall a blue-to-white gradation, suddenly has purple included. Or, in a red-to-white gradation, you will find a sky blue used. From my research, it seems that often the makers got bored with using the standardised colour shades and so introduced something unexpected.

Historically, embroiderers – including those for the royal court – could be creative and witty with their designs. I love discovering examples of them using freestyle stitching (sometimes a bit clumsy) or introducing a curious lavender-coloured deer, or perhaps including unexpected asymmetric figures in a symmetrical design. I like to bring a similar approach to my work.

The language of symbols

Nearly every motif in traditional Korean embroidery has a symbolic interpretation, so the way they are combined is important in terms of creating meaning. For example, a deer (symbolically the spirit of Taoism) is often shown with a mushroom (representing the elixir of life); a representation of the ‘deer’ (or Taoist spirit) achieving eternal life by eating the mushroom.

The concept of yin and yang – that opposites are needed in order for harmony to exist – meant that historically Korean embroiderers or painters preferred to put things in pairs. It might be a pair of the same animal (for example, a buck and a doe) or a pair of different things that go well together due to their symbolism, such as a pine tree and a bamboo tree, or a deer and a mushroom.

You can also make a symmetrical design out of a set of the traditional Korean longevity symbols. For example, placing a pine tree and a bamboo tree on opposite sides to each other in one panel, or a pine tree on one side of a pillow end and a bamboo tree on the other. You might use other trees if you like, and you can find a peach tree replacing bamboo in some ancient pieces, however, you’d never use something like maple trees or elderflower trees as longevity symbols. I like to notice such conceptual elements and bring them into my work.

Making up for lost time

I don’t intend to stick to the traditional way of doing things all of the time and I’m willing to be more flexible in my future work. Yet, chances are that I’ll continue working with the traditional techniques and subjects because I’d really like to see Korean embroidery given the attention it deserves.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Korean embroidery – along with every other element of the country – went through tough times due to Japanese colonialism. Traditional Korean embroidery was banned and people were forced to embroider in the Japanese style. This was at a time when there was a huge wave of Western culture and rapid industrialisation. 

It is only recently that Korean embroidery has begun to be studied properly and given its place. I can’t help wondering what it would have been like if it hadn’t been interrupted and, instead, given the chance to develop. It will be hard to make up for the lost time and bring Korean embroidery to where it would have been. Nevertheless, I want to try my best to branch out directly from the original Korean embroidery, rather than rushing to jump forward 100 years.

The creative process

I often embroider for hours on end, so it’s hard for me to set time aside just to plan and develop ideas. While I’m not good at organising things, I’m constantly gathering ideas. Often, I’ll be thinking about my next project when I’m walking down the street, having a cup of coffee, taking a shower, or working on a current piece.

“I’ll sit with an idea, and it will often go through several rounds of revisions in my head before I bring it to fruition.”

Heewha Jo, Textile artist

So, although I might look spaced out, my mind is busy figuring out and testing ideas, and discarding some of them along the way.

My design process is quite intuitive and instinctive. Most of it is rooted in the Korean tradition and cultural heritage, which is filled with symbolism. While there are no absolute rules, and not every piece of historic Korean embroidery follows the same structure or design, with experience and having done loads of research, you can figure out some patterns. 

When it comes to working out my design, I used to sketch with pencil and paper, which I feel most comfortable with, but I’ve gotten used to using Adobe Illustrator due to the convenient data storage.

The mother of invention

The only tools I need are a needle, embroidery threads and my hands. I like to use whatever I have around. I realised that, in the past, people didn’t have much equipment, and sometimes accidentally created something better by just managing with what they had. Therefore, I feel rather excited when I’m running out of a particular material and have to make do in order to keep going.

We often make the twisted thread ourselves; buying untwisted silk thread and twisting it by hand according to one’s preferred degree of twist. A thread can also be somewhere in between the twisted and the half-twisted. 

There are no specific brands for Korean embroidery thread. An equivalent may be something like DMC twisted silk thread, which is somewhat in between but a little bit closer to twisted rather than half-twisted thread. Outside of Korea, I usually recommend people look for 2-ply twisted silk thread or if you want a specific brand, Soie Gobelins from Au Ver a Soie would be a good example. The Silk Mill is a great visual resource.

“However, there are no strict rules to follow, so technically you can use anything.”

Heewha Jo, Textile artist

Is it worth making?

I can struggle with justifying what I create. I should say that I really love fine art, especially painting. But one of the reasons I value these traditional embroidered items so much is their practicality. Although technically, the embroidery has no function itself, one could say it has a spiritual one, like an amulet that prevents misfortune, strengthening positive symbolic meanings from the auspicious design. 

What’s interesting, however, is that most traditional embroidery embellished items created for specific functions or purposes. Of course, I’d love it if people today were able to use the items I make in the way our ancestors did. However, it’s a fact that these objects are not in everyday use nowadays. So, it’s a dilemma when I’m making something that is supposed to be used but is actually only ever looked at.

“Despite creating embroidered objects without a function, I’m always trying, at the very least, to instil the essence of craft in my work – aesthetic, utility and meaning. Therefore I’m always asking myself the same question: ‘Is it worth making?’.”

Heewha Jo, Textile artist

I hope asking this will help my work develop and mature, as well as continuing the Korean legacy of traditional embroidery, which encompasses longevity symbols, auspicious design, yin and yang, and the pure heart of the ancient embroiderers, which is found in their works.

The power of curating

In 2022 I held my first solo exhibition, which was a great impetus for me to develop my work. I also fulfilled my dream of curating and hosting an exhibition. As well as my embroidery, I prepared everything, from selecting a traditional Korean house in Seoul as the venue to designing and making posters, invitations and digital brochures (using the photos taken by my better half), plus leaflets and description labels. I even created a set of display stands by customising rods, panels and fabrics so that I could arrange my works just the way I wanted. 

Although all of this took a lot of time and effort it was worth it as, in the past, I had sometimes seen my embroidery or others’ being exhibited inappropriately or unattractively. Being my own creative director is something that I hope to continue in the future.

Seeing the light

People often comment that I have BA degrees in both Korean Language and Korean Literature, and Fashion and Textiles. That unusual combination sums up my life-long interests. Since I was a child, I’ve been captivated by anything relating to art and handicrafts, as well as Korean language and traditional culture. The national museums and galleries, or the ancient Korean palaces and temples in Seoul and other cities were our family’s regular holiday spots. I really enjoyed looking around the classical artefacts and architecture – and even souvenirs at the gift shops.

I wouldn’t describe my family as artistic but that kind of thing seems to be in my blood. My dad was a self-employed, skilful neon sign maker who wrote letters and drew his own designs. My mum was the one who, every morning I discussed what to wear and how to match things. She first taught me how to draw, sew and knit.

“This family culture encouraged me to feel comfortable with seeing colours and creating things by hand, as well as preferring to work for myself rather than be an employee. Although I never thought I’d be an embroidery artist, I knew that I would end up doing something like it.”

Heewha Jo, Textile artist

I’m directly inspired and influenced by Korean relics like paintings, costumes and pottery, along with embroidery, and indirectly by my interest in fashion and fashion design. I’ve been interested in clothing for as long as I can remember, which is why I ended up studying Fashion and Textiles and working in the clothing industry. 

It was while I was working for an international company that I first saw embroidery in a new light. I also used to design and make clothes myself. Nowadays, although fashion doesn’t directly impact my work, something like the theme of a seasonal fashion collection, a magazine fashion shoot or the colour palette of the year does make my heart beat faster and fuel my creativity.

I used to be the type of person who falls easily in and out of love with what I like. I loved painting, knitting, making clothes, writing and whatsoever, but none of them held my interest for long. This is probably why I hesitated about going straight into my own business. 

Those around me – and even me if I’m honest – probably thought my interest in embroidery would die down. However, it’s been eight years or so now since I’ve devoted myself solely to Korean embroidery and I’m still not tired of it. I have a long list of ideas to embroider so there’s no room for anything else. It will take me an enormous amount of time, maybe more than my lifetime, to complete all of what I want to create.

l would like to share what I know and love of Korean embroidery through exhibitions, lectures and talks, as well as photos and books, in both Korean and English if possible. My dream is to present a new collection of work regularly – perhaps annually or biannually as fashion designers normally do. Of course it would be a challenge, requiring a massive amount of time and effort from me, but it would be worth it as there are trends in embroidery today just as there were in the past.

Dionne is well known for her colourful, richly stitched embroideries that impart vitality and energy – artworks based on scenes in nature and her beloved village of Tornareccio in Abruzzo, central Italy where she often goes to teach. 

We often talk about painting with thread, but drawing with thread most accurately describes the intention behind Dionne’s machine stitching. Dionne’s focus is on the importance of drawing as preparation for stitching. It’s her way of closely observing what she wants to stitch and it gives her direction. In her own words, ‘the stitch can’t happen without the drawing’.

As Dionne’s work develops, she continues to communicate with us, through her abstract expressionist thread paintings of lines, blocks and colours, the places in nature that lie deep within her heart.

Building a career

Dionne Swift: I’ve been a practising textile artist, and have been teaching for almost 35 years. These days I split my time between Holmfirth in Yorkshire, UK and Abruzzo in central Italy.  

I came to textiles through my two grandmothers. Gran Inglis lived in Glasgow – she was an aran knitter. She never followed a knitting pattern, she just kind of made it up as she went along. Gran Millar smocked and embroidered by hand – she was a good dressmaker and made most of my dresses as I was growing up. When I was about 10 or 11 years old I went with Gran to select a pattern to make a pair of shorts. I chose a tricky Vogue style with inset pockets and a fly zip! She set me up and left me to it, waiting in the living room in case I needed any help.

I followed the steps a bit at a time and, hey presto, in an afternoon I’d made my first garment. That level of independence was so empowering at that young age and it inspired an eclectic homemade teenage wardrobe.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

I was pretty academic at school but found my niche after A-levels when I went to study a Foundation Art and Design course at North Warwickshire College. I was then accepted to study textiles at Goldsmiths, and in the late 90s, I gained a Masters in Textiles from the University of Central England (now called Birmingham City University). As a student, my work spanned a range of techniques including embroidery, paper making, felt and print.  

After Goldsmiths I started teaching; it was a very full on and vibrant phase of life. I had three or four part-time teaching roles and I would dash between them during my lunch break. Having just graduated, most of my students were of a similar age to me. Teaching was, and still is a joy; inspiration flows both ways as ideas bounce in all directions.

In 1996, some of my MA colour work was featured in Inspirational Textiles Trend forecasting magazine. Soon after, I produced a range of hand painted devoré scarves and was in the Gift of the Year awards, creating bespoke collections for the Royal Academy shop. By 2000, I was highlighted in several interior design magazines and my devoré velvet scarf collection was featured at Australian Fashion Week in Sydney.

Over the years my work has changed, moved on, progressed. Some say they see the same handwriting running through my body of creative work. Moving and development is vital to me: I get bored repeating the same thing. I need to learn something from each new piece. 

I guess creating art is a process of discovery for me – if I’m not learning anything then it’s time to stop.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

Drawing is true seeing

For me drawing is the most immediate form of investigation and discovery – I learn about my environment through observation and translation to the drawn line. I move around a lot, zipping to Italy whenever I can, and so observational drawing helps to slow me down, ground me, and helps me appreciate ‘that place at that moment’. 

Drawing has become the backbone of my practice, everything hangs from this: it gives me ideas, whether it be for jewellery or for textiles. It tells me how to sew, the type of thread I should use, the direction in which to create the stitches and the tension I need.

My work would be nothing without drawing. Some days it’s the only thing I can rely on – it’s true, honest and often pretty raw.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

Stitching can’t happen without drawing. When I sew, I’m not picking ideas out of my head, I’m using what’s in my books, on the paper in front of me. It’s constantly informing my practice and that’s what moves everything forward.

I’m against the word sketching. It’s completely different to drawing, which is a deliberate and purposeful act. If I couldn’t do anything else except one thing, it would be drawing. 

When I draw, I’m looking to be the camera and capture a moment in time, in space – capture an atmosphere, capture an environment.

It’s essential to go out and draw in situ. Being in the actual place, looking at real objects makes the action of drawing more challenging. You, as the artist, have to translate the information that you see from 3D to 2D. All the decisions that your brain is making in doing that, are the things that make the work unique. If you let a camera do that, the next person can do exactly the same thing. The way that you interpret the scene, the things that you pick up on make it your own

There are odd occasions when I have to take a photograph, but the ideal scenario is to get the full experience by drawing en plein air. Then you’ve got the memory, your own story and the history related to that place.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

People often call my work abstract, though I don’t see it as that. I’m not looking for absolute realism. It’s purely my interpretation of the way that I’ve drawn and the way that I sew on a particular day because I’m emotionally in a certain place. A camera does a good job of giving you a realistic interpretation of a subject. Therefore, when I draw, why should I try to do the same? Drawing gives it more atmosphere.

Draw to inform your stitch

I genuinely suggest everybody draws. I think there’s a real stigma people have developed over the years where, maybe at school, somebody told them they can’t draw. But, with practice, your uniqueness will come out.

Don’t do one drawing and think you can do that in stitch. Do 20 drawings and pick the best, the one that speaks to you the most. Your muscle memory created by drawing with a pen or pencil will filter through and give you more confidence when you begin your machine stitching.

Just slow down and draw, then the drawing will tell you what to do next. Nobody believes me when I tell them that because they all think drawing’s a bit boring – but really it’s the best bit.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

Voyage of discovery

If I don’t learn through my work, there isn’t any point. I’m learning about the world, about the things around me. About the way that a leaf is formed, the intricate edge of the bark of a tree, about the shape of a landscape, about the colour of the sky, the shadows on buildings. You notice everything that you normally scan by on a daily basis without stopping to look to really understand it. 

I need to look well enough to be able to put information on paper. The Impressionists would look at a scene again and again and again, and paint it again and again and again. Every day, every moment has different lighting conditions that cast on a landscape. Once, when I was painting a landscape in northern Italy, every time I looked up from my paper, the light had changed and I couldn’t keep up because of that continually moving light. As an artist that keeps me on my toes.

That’s why I find teaching so important. If I can pass on a sense of the importance of the vitality of learning and seeing, I’m leaving an incredibly valuable legacy.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

More recently I’ve been drawn to different locations, not necessarily landscapes but cityscapes, villages, buildings, and leaves. We have an olive grove in Italy and the atmosphere underneath the trees is really interesting to me. It’s been the closest thing to me, and so that’s been the subject I’ve drawn from more recently.

Stitching – direct, raw, vibrant

In recent years I’ve focused on working with free machine embroidery. It can be very fast paced and intense but, strangely, this can often calm me.

I sew in the same manner as I draw – it’s direct and raw. I like to build layers of stitch, much as one might with paint. The layers of thread build depth to the surface and richness to the colour and texture of a piece.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

Working at speed is down to the beauty of my machine as much as anything else. My Janome HD9, which is a straight stitch only machine, does 1600 stitches a minute and I want to fulfil its potential. In the past, I have used an industrial machine, which did 3000-4000 stitches a minute. I can keep up with that, but there isn’t a broad range of interesting threads that can withstand that speed. My Janome MC6700 has a larger throat area and runs at 1200 stitches per minute, with the bonus of over 200 diverse stitches. I can access plenty of different threads on that.

Embroidery has traditionally had a particular characteristic of being quite slow, sedately sitting by the fire sewing contemplatively. But you can still be contemplative, meditative, and zone out by moving quickly. Some people do it by running or going to the gym where their mind floats off to other places. For me, it’s sewing at speed. If I’m filling a large area with free machine embroidery I have to go quickly or it would take me years.

Everyone does it in their own style and offers their own visual voice to the fabric and to the thread. I think I do that through the character of my marks and of my stitches, the way that I lay threads down, sometimes very smooth, sometimes very textured. 

I usually work with Wonderfil and sometimes Aurifil threads. I use the full range of thread weights that I can put through the needle or in the bobbin, from 100 weight, which is very fine, to 8 weight, which is hand embroidery thread. 

Though I’m no eco-warrior, I use natural materials where I can because they sound nicer when I sew. There’s a certain sweet sound when the needle pierces the cloth. Wool is my preference because it is the softest and I like it to be woven rather than felted because it’s got more stability, more hold in the warp and the weft. But equally working on calico or linen is fine, or silk – something rather heavier than habotai.

Birthday exhibition

Just before lockdown, in 2019, to celebrate turning 50 years young, I created 50 pieces – 50@50. They exhibited in my solo show Momentum at Timeless Textiles, Newcastle, Australia that same year but, unfortunately, by the time the show came to UK soil, it was closed due to lockdown restrictions.  

Each stitched piece is inspired by a drawing of that year. I created far more than 50 drawings, as I always like to make more, working freely and without constraint, then select my favourites.

I explored the sights, sounds and atmosphere of all the places I visited, being pulled and attracted like a magpie to vibrant, rich and effervescent colour.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

These relatively small pieces, each approximately 20-25cm, burst with colour and texture as lines of stitch criss-cross to build the composition. I’m very proud of this collection – it took dedication to create, and developing each piece moved my practice into new areas of discovery.

Intense and prolonged periods of sewing have gradually begun to take their toll on my body: shoulders, hands and arms feel each of those stitches, hence I regulate my bouts of stitchery in order to keep my body in good order. However, in 2021 after the passing of my younger brother the year before, I tackled my largest stitched work to date. My brother was a ‘bird man’ – he bred duck, geese, chickens, he loved all things feathered. My Murmuration of stitches is there to help carry him onwards. This piece was part of SEW Rome during Rome Artweek 2021 but now remains at home.

Textiles in jewellery

Recently I have been enjoying incorporating newly revived silversmithing skills into my textile repertoire. One of my early teaching roles was as head of multi-disciplinary design which led me to ceramics, metal, wood and plastics as well as textiles, so my knowledge base is broad.

Forming silver frames, I can encase my stitch and put it central stage in neck pieces and brooches.

Dionne Swift, Textile artist

I’ve been trying to avoid the excessive use of glass framing, allowing the texture of my work to be seen without a barrier. It’s better still if it can be handled and used, so bags, purses, hand painted and drawn scarves allow us all to engage more fully with that tactile surface. It’s a comforting and real sensation, retained for longer by utilising all of our senses.

Future plans

The exhibitions I’ve got lined up will be drawings with some stitch and some jewellery, all based on the olive trees and olive grove. They’ll be at the contemporary craft shows: Made London; Blue Magpie Crafts, Shropshire; Landmark Arts Centre, Teddington; and Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair, Manchester.

I have plans to ‘go back’ – back to that basic, raw state of drawing. It’s the start of everything, it informs my stitched line. Drawing is everything and it will tell me where to go next.

So how do you choose?

Here’s what you need to do. First, figure out what you need the scissors for – this will help you to decide which types of scissors meet your needs. Then you can narrow down your options. To assist you, we’ve compiled this useful guide. 

We’ve also asked top textile artists Yvette Phillips, Aran Illingworth, Jessica Grady, Hannah Mansfield and Katherine Diuguid for their personal recommendations of the best scissors for textile art. 

So if you’ve always wondered why some scissors feature a stork design, and others have duckbill shaped blades or a curved design, then this article is for you. 

Read on to discover more about the world of embroidery scissors.

Please note: We’ve written this article to help you select the right scissors for the right task, and learn more about the different designs and some of the brands available. We’ve provided links to manufacturers and suppliers so that you can find out more before you head to your favourite local or online stockist. The scissors featured in this article have not been individually reviewed or tested.

Cutting threads with precision

Embroidery scissors are small and sharp, designed specifically for cutting threads or tiny snippets of fabric. There are lots of options to choose from: vintage decorative designs, traditional stork scissors, rose gold scissors, matte black scissors, colourful designs, foldable travel scissors and ergonomic scissors aimed for comfort.

Small straight embroidery scissors

Often the unfussy, straightforward option is the best. Classic embroidery scissors are small, pointed and sharp – perfect for cutting embroidery threads cleanly. They are widely available in haberdashery stores and online, and are made by many manufacturers.

• Fiskars Classic Precision straight scissors

• Prym Professional fine embroidery scissors, featuring quality Kai blades.

• Hemline embroidery scissors

Stork embroidery scissors

This distinctive and popular design evolved from the umbilical clamps in the toolkits of 19th century midwives. It was common for midwives to embroider in their quieter times and so their medical and stitch kits often became mixed up, as seen in the toolkit of midwife Rosa Bonfante held by the Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

• Klasse’ stork embroidery scissors 

• Hemline stork embroidery scissors

• Prym stork embroidery scissors

Decorative small embroidery scissors

If you are looking for something a little more fancy, try the Dinky Dyes colourful range of patterned embroidery scissors.

• Dinky Dyes scissors

Wide bow embroidery scissors

If you are looking for comfort, try a pair of wide bow (or big bow) embroidery scissors, which feature larger spaces for your fingers. These come in a standard size of around 10cm (4″) size, or as smaller baby bows, around 7cm (2¾”).

• Merchant and Mills wide bow scissors

Embroidery snips

Some stitchers like to use thread snips for cutting loose threads. They are spring-loaded, making them easy to use. Snips are also useful for anyone who does a lot of beadwork – they are great for cutting nylon or monofilament beading threads.

• Madeira thread snips

• Hemline thread snips

Goldwork scissors

Goldwork is an embroidery technique which uses a range of metal threads giving luxurious results. To cut goldwork purl and check wires cleanly, a good sharp pair of scissors is recommended. You can also buy specialist goldwork scissors, which have a finely serrated blade and should only be used for cutting metal threads.

Hannah Mansfield recommends… goldwork scissors

Hannah Mansfield: ‘My favourite scissors to use for goldwork embroidery are a small gold pair from Golden Hinde. They are made specifically for cutting goldwork wires. They have a serrated blade which means they can cleanly cut the wires instead of squashing the ends. 

‘I particularly like the fine point of these scissors, which allows you to cut the wires delicately and precisely. Having a dedicated pair of scissors for goldwork is essential to avoid blunting your best embroidery scissors with the wires.’

• Golden Hinde goldwork scissors

Hannah Mansfield is an embroidery designer based near Bristol, UK. In 2019, she was awarded First Prize in the Textile Art Open category of the Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery (UK). Hannah became a Trade Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers in 2020. She is a tutor for the Prince’s Foundation Metiers d’Arts embroidery course.

Artist website: theperpetualmaker.com
Instagram: @theperpetualmaker

Bent scissors

These small scissors have an ultra-fine point and an angled, bent blade. They are designed to make it easy to cut away warp and weft threads of the ground fabric when creating the beautiful lace effects of Hardanger work, a traditional whitework technique.

Katherine Diuguid recommends… KAI embroidery scissors

Katherine Diuguid: ‘I absolutely love KAI scissors – the sharp tips are nice and small and I can get into really tight spaces with no trouble at all. 

‘I use my angled [bent] embroidery scissors for cutting goldwork metals on a velvet board, for cutwork and chipping techniques.  

‘I prefer using my appliqué curved tip scissors for cutting the metal while I’m stitching it, or for any cutting close to or around the surface I’m embroidering – they are good for snipping threads without feeling like I might accidentally cut the ground fabric. 

‘The thing that I love most about the KAI scissors is that their blades are nice and thin and will chop my metals precisely with no bite marks or burrs. 

‘The only thing I don’t use my KAI scissors for is silk threads: I have a beautiful pair of Ernest Wright scissors that I use only for cutting silks. I do so much metal embroidery that it’s easier for me to have scissors that do everything including metal, and one special pair that only cut silk. As you can tell I am somewhat passionate about my scissors! They make a massive difference in the quality of your stitching, maintaining the rhythm when you’re stitching, and reducing waste.’

• KAI curved tip scissors US

• KAI bent scissors US

• KAI curved tip scissors UK

• Prym KAI bent scissors UK

• Ernest Wright embroidery scissors UK

Katherine Diuguid, based in Mooresville, North Carolina, US, is known for her technical studies of colour theory in embroidery. She has presented her research at academic conferences for SECAC and the Textile Society of America. Her work has been featured in Inspirations (published by the Embroiderers’ Guild of America) and NeedleArts magazines.

Artist website: katherinediuguid.squarespace.com
Facebook: KatherineDiuguidArtist
Instagram: @katdiuguid

Curved scissors

If you are a fan of appliqué, you might want to invest in some curved scissors for cutting out small fabric shapes.

Yvette Phillips recommends… Westcott curved scissors

Textile artist Yvette Phillips has a box of scissors she’s collected over the years. Her favourites are a pair of Westcott 10cm (4″) curved titanium super soft grip scissors. 

Yvette Phillips: ‘They’re small and have a slight curve to them, which are great for snipping threads or trimming the edge of something that’s been appliquéd on. They allow you to get closer to the fabric without accidentally sticking the points into the fabric. I also use them for cutting shapes – the curved blades are really useful for cutting curved leaves or flower petals.’

Yvette also uses a variety of small sharp scissors, including a pair of Westcott small pointed scissors. These are good for cutting out small, detailed fabric shapes. To keep your embroidery and fabric scissors sharp, she advises using separate pairs for cutting fabric and paper. 

‘I put a blob of coloured nail polish on the blade of the scissors I use for cutting fabric, to differentiate them from the ones that I use to cut paper.’

• Westcott curved titanium embroidery scissors

• Westcott small pointed embroidery scissors

Yvette Phillips is a British textile artist living and working in Blewbury,Oxfordshire. She is a member of the Oxford Art Society, the Society for Embroidered Work, The Embroiderers’ Guild, and Modern Makers Collective.

Artist website: yvettephillipsart.com
Instagram: @yvettephillips_art

Appliqué scissors

Duckbill scissors are great for appliqué and quilt making. The duckbill shape gives great control and protects the base fabric when you are trimming close to the edges of a stitched fabric shape.

• Prym appliqué scissors

Scissors for cutting fabric

A larger pair of scissors is useful for cutting larger pieces of fabric, thick materials, or several layers of fabric. Fabric shears, dressmaker’s shears and tailor’s sidebent shears all have long, sharp blades. To increase their lifespan and keep them sharp, only use them for cutting fabric, and not paper.

Aran Illingworth recommends… Fiskars scissors

Fiskars make stainless steel scissors with classic orange handles which are recognisable worldwide. The company was founded as an ironworks in Finland in 1649 and their first cutlery and scissor mill was established in 1832. 

The iconic handle in Fiskars Orange™ is designed for comfort, and the precision ground stainless steel blades are known for their cutting performance and longevity.

Aran Illingworth: ‘My go-to fabric scissors are Fiskars’ fabric shears. I have been using Fiskars scissors for over a decade as they produce scissors which are durable, ergonomic and reliable. They allow me to cut fabrics with a range of densities and textures, both cleanly and precisely.’

• Fiskars Classic tailor’s shears, 27cm

Aran Illingworth is a textile artist based in Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, UK. Originally a psychiatric nurse working with the homeless and those suffering from addictions, she completed a degree in Applied Arts in 2010. She held a solo exhibition at the Knitting and Stitching Show in 2022 and exhibits at The Old Chapel Textile Centre, Newbury and The Willow Gallery in Oswestry in 2023.

Artist website: aran-i.com
Facebook: aranillingworth
Instagram: @aranillingworth

Left-handed scissors

If you are left-handed and want to avoid getting those painful blisters on your hands, the good news is that some manufacturers make left-handed embroidery scissors and fabric shears. 

Other brands have super soft ergonomic handles that can be used by both left and right-handers. With a bit of trial and error, you’ll be able to find the perfect pair of scissors to cut accurately and painlessly.

• Premax left-handed embroidery scissors

• Famoré left-handed embroidery scissors, US

• Mundial ergonomic embroidery scissors, US

• Mundial ergonomic embroidery scissors, UK 

• Taylor’s Eye Witness left-handed dressmaking shears 

• Fiskars left-handed fabric shears

• Milward left-handed fabric shears

• Prym soft handle ergonomic tailor’s shears

Jessica Grady recommends… scissors for left-handers

Jessica Grady: ‘Being a left-handed stitcher, finding the perfect scissors always seems to be a little tricky. My favourite pair are actually not left-handed scissors at all, but are a pair of traditional Japanese bonsai pruning scissors – they are the perfect size and shape for cutting threads. I find these can be worked with your left or right hand and don’t give me painful scissor blisters. 

‘As I work with mixed media I go through lots and lots of pairs of scissors. I’m constantly cutting through tough materials like rubber, plastic and metal. I like to stock up with several pairs of low cost kitchen scissors from homewares stores like IKEA, as I don’t have to worry about blunting the blades – they are more budget friendly than specialist textile brands, and I can have a pair for all the different materials I work with.’

Jessica Grady is an artist based in West Yorkshire, UK. In 2018 she was awarded an Embroiderers’ Guild Scholarship (under 30). She is also an exhibiting member of Art Textiles Made in Britain (ATMB) and The Society for Embroidered Work. She is the author of Stitched Mixed Media (2023), and exhibited her work at the 2023 Knitting and Stitching Shows in Harrogate and London, with Art Textiles: Made in Britain, and The Embroiderers’ Guild.

Artist website: jessicagrady.co.uk
Instagram: @jessica_rosestitch

Looking for a bit of luxury?

Whiteley’s is a family run firm based in Sheffield, UK. The owners describe the company as ‘the last industrial scissor maker in the UK, and the oldest scissor smiths in the Western world’. William Whiteley & Sons were founded in 1760 and continue to produce handmade scissors for sewing and tailoring, including the Wilkinson patented ‘sidebent’ scissors which run flat along the fabric enabling a long straight cut, and a range of beautiful and high quality embroidery scissors.

Ernest Wright is another Sheffield-based company in the UK with a long history. They create sought after handmade embroidery shears and fabric shears. The company’s efforts to maintain and pass on the traditional methods for handcrafting scissors (which is on the list of critically endangered crafts in the UK) were rewarded in 2020 with the President’s Award for Endangered Crafts, given by the Heritage Crafts Association.

If you are looking to purchase scissors as a gift, the popular UK-based small business retailer Merchant & Mills stocks a good selection of attractively packaged, high quality embroidery scissors and fabric shears. The company’s ethos is to sell stylish, functional and sustainable products – and their scissors are designed for a long life.

Karen Kay Buckley, the US-based quilt artist, developed the Perfect Scissors™ range of straight and serrated blade scissors. These have stainless steel blades and soft, ergonomic handles which can be used by both left-handed and right-handed people. The serrated blade scissors are great for appliqué as they can also be used for cutting several layers of fabric at the same time. They pull the fabric into the scissors as you use them, giving a clean cut which is less likely to fray.

KAI is a premium Japanese brand with a long history, having been established in 1908. Known for their mission of combining old traditions with innovative production technologies, their scissors are made of high carbon stainless steel with vanadium, and are strong, well balanced and long lasting.

• Whiteley’s

• Ernest Wright

• Merchant and Mills

• Karen Kay Buckley

• KAI scissors US, KAI Europe, and stockists worldwide