Journeys in Textile Practice

Last weekend my piece for the Habitat project brief was on display as part of the Saltaire Arts Trail alongside work from my fellow students. I couldn't be there so feedback and pictures were relayed to me via Instagram and WhatsApp. I had entrusted my work to the rest of the group to display in situ in the Wash House Gardens in Saltaire and they did a lovely job. I had given instructions to tie it around a tree trunk but I had also liked to see the light shining through the circles on a sunny day and they managed to find a way to do both.  The feedback from the visitors to the gardens was really lovely to read and a real boost to hear that other people were interested by it, found it appealing and was even something that they might want to have in their homes. I hadn't considered at all that it might be something someone would want to buy and own!  Work by Anna Kingston Work by Catherine Hartley It sat along side a really diverse group of work that we had each produced, all o...

  This post reflects on two visits to the Althea McNish 'Colour Is Mine' exhibition at The Whitworth gallery in Manchester in 2023. The first visit was in March with my college course and the second in May was a tour by the curator Rose Sinclair. On the first visit I was unfamiliar with the work of Althea McNish and was mainly struck by the colours and the enduring appeal of her designs. I particularly loved the dresses set against a backdrop of hanging textiles and the vibrancy of the colour combinations. I was also interested by how her designs from the 70s really evoked memories of that time for me. Vibrant colours dominated my first visit On my second visit, my experience of the exhibition was quite different. Rose Sinclair talked to us about McNish from the point of view of a friend as well as being someone who has studied McNish's career in detail. Her explanations explained how quickly she moved from Art School to producing designs for Liberty and then on to Heals an...

This post reflects on my development of the design for my piece for Saltaire Arts Trail and on my view of the outcome of the work In previous posts, I talked about how it took a while for an idea to take shape  in response to the brief and then how this idea evolved into the final work t hrough the use of multiple techniques . Having now completed the piece, whilst I am pleased with the outcome there are a number of things I learnt through the process, including the following: - Value feedback. Halfway through the project I presented a few samples and an overview of my idea of moorland recovery to fellow students. Having explained what felt to me like a disjointed idea with unconnected samples, the feedback was that it was a coherent and interesting idea and was worthy of development and exploration. The feedback also provided reassurance that the samples that I liked were also what appealed to others, encouraging me to trust myself and develop the ideas that appealed to me. Birch ...

This post looks at three artists whose work is inspired by nature and reflects its textures.  Vanessa Barragao is a Portuguese textile artist whose work is made up of beautiful organic shapes and textures. She uses a variety of techniques -  l atch hook, crochet, felt, weaving, embroidery and macrame. Her website describes how her  art comes from concerns about consumption and sustainability. She uses waste yarn and deadstock and uses hand processes.  She  talks about the process of creating her work as 'organic' and the result being 'unknown and unpredictable'. She references her inspiration as the degradation of coral reefs. Her work is a reaction to over-consumption and the pollution that is created by the fashion industry serving and stimulating this desire. She uses her work to communicate about the need to change our behaviour and that of the fashion industry that drives it, and reverse the damage and pollution caused by it. Dunas I, Vanessa Barraga...

This post reflects on some the materials and techniques I used whilst creating a piece of textile art to display at Saltaire Arts Trail in May 2023.  The material that I really began with and felt that I wanted to do something with (although not sure what at that stage) were fine birch twigs collected from Shipley Glen in January. The flexibility of them made me want to wrap and twist them and they formed into small rings. They weren't promising as individual items but stitching them together started to build a structure that took on form.  Birch twigs and the rings formed from looping them round  I stitched the rings together with some beautiful silk thread from Paintbox threads and wrapped some of the rings in spare yarns. I didn't pay too much attention to what I was using and just chose what was to hand and that went together well. As my thoughts developed on I started to focus on a moorland habitat theme I created the sample in the right hand picture below base...

  This post reflects on a visit to The Whitworth textile archive in Manchester as part of The Textile Society events in May 2023 Close up of heavily darned Eygption tunic Last weekend brought three Textile Society events to Manchester, one of which involved a visit to the textile archive and study room at The Whitworth. I've visited the gallery many times but I wasn't aware of how extensive the archive is, how easy it is to arrange access or how many textile-related books are in the study room!  I had used a couple of items from the online archive as input for a previous project on darning so I was very excited to see that the archivists had included two darning-related items amongst the selection of artefacts they had pulled out for us to look at.  The first, and one I'd spent a good amount of time looking closely at one a computer screen, was an Egyptian tunic for a child from around the 600s. It was so heavily worn and darned that in places, the base hessian-type fabri...

Colour study of Shipley Glen I recently revisited Saltaire, where the outcome from the 'Habitat' project mentioned in my previous post is to be displayed. My first visit had focussed on the town and I had subsequently spent time playing with maps, street layouts and building patterns but none of the results really felt like they connected with the project brief. On my return visit I had a bit more time and I walked  along the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, up Shipley Glen through the woods and back along the River Aire.   Walking up through Shipley Glen, I found it interesting how the landscape shows the signs of past activity - bits of metal protrude from the rocks on the top of the glen where the fun fair was in the late 1800s. There is a small pool/reservoir lower down in the woods surrounded by railings, now partly crushed and twisted by a fallen tree.  I collected birch twigs in the woods in the Glen, not sure what to do with them but liking their del...