Textile Talk

Alison is a self-taught artist who works primarily with textiles, often incorporating mixed media elements into her work to enhance their compositions. She began her journey into textile art in her mid-forties, and since then, her work has continually evolved as she experiments with new techniques and ideas. Her work is a celebration of the natural world, captured through this tactile and versatil...

Jude is a practising mixed media artist and tutor. She currently teaches small groups of 1 or 2 from her own studio, and also larger groups in both the UK and across Europe. She has also exhibited both individually and as part of groups in the UK and in Europe. Jude has taught Masterclasses at Festival of Quilts and worked as the Studio Manager with Leslie Morgan at Committed to Clo...

The Knitting and Stitching Show at Harrogate Convention Centre runs from the 21st to 24th November 2024, And here’s an exclusive offer just for you: Use the discount code SST when you book to save on your tickets. Simply head over to theknittingandstitchingshow.com/harrogate/sst to secure your spot. Artist Salley Mavor has spent over 4 decades honing her signature style and working methods, carvin...

Dr. Jack Roberts, aka JPR Stitch is a fine artist whose primary medium is freehand machine embroidery. His art is formed from simple organic flowing abstract shapes, but is constructed from a dense and complex web of stitch. His stitchings are a reflection of the calmness, tranquillity and contentedness that he feels when sitting at the sewing machine and creating. Sewing is his meditation an...

Helen moved from Art to Art Quilting in 2004 and has enjoyed many international awards for her unique approach to machine quilting and creating art quilts. In 16 years of quilting, Helen has won 16 awards at Houston including the inaugural A World of Beauty and Master of Innovative Artistry. Helen’s work is predominately pictorial, with strong design and exciting play with colour. She uses her pai...

Sarah de Rousset-Hall is a hand embroidery artist and teacher, she works as a tutor for the Royal School of Needlework and runs her own embroidery business, Sarah Stitches. Sarah came to embroidery as a second career, but has been embroidering as long as she can remember. Following on from a cancer diagnosis at 30, she returned to being a student a few years later to turn her hobby into a professi...

Scottish artist Jo Hamilton moved to Portland, Oregon in the early 1990s, after earning her BFA from the Glasgow School of Art. Her technique combines years of fine art practice with the craft of crochet which she learned as a child from her Gran, rendering traditional categories, which include portraiture, landscape and nudes in a contemporary light. Her work has been widely shown in the U.S. and...

Jamie Chalmers, aka Mr X Stitch, aka the Kingpin of Contemporary Embroidery, took up cross stitching fifteen years ago and he’s never looked back. Since establishing the Mr X Stitch website in 2008, he has been showcasing new talent in the world of needlework and textile art and has curated a number of stitch-based exhibitions in the UK and Ireland. He is the curator of PUSH Stitchery and the auth...

Northern Yarn is an independent wool shop, situated in the historic city of Lancaster, with a stong focus on locally sourced British wool, including their own line produced from the fleeces of local flocks of sheep. Owner Kate Makin works together with local farmers, paying a higher price for good quality fleeces - then follows the process from sheep to skein creating a completely traceable produc...

Zoë is a freelance artist, designer & illustrator based in Edinburgh, Scotland. She has an honours degree in industrial design for textiles (print) and enjoyed a career in graphic design & the creative arts spanning over twenty years. Zoë now focuses on illustration commissions and personal work. Zoë loves travelling, trying new foods and enjoys lifting weights in the gym. In her work...

Gail chats with Debbie and Di from Appletons Wools. Appletons brand of crewel and tapestry wool has been used for nearly 200 years across the globe in some of the most prestigious tapestries and embroideries in cathedrals, stately homes, and government buildings. Founded in 1835 by Thomas Appleton, Appletons is just as evangelical about British wool today as he was back then. All 425 colours are d...

Cas Holmes is a British artist, author and tutor of Romani heritage specialising in textile work with found materials. She trained in fine art and is interested  in interdisciplinary  projects in community and gallery settings to demonstrate the accessibility of mixed media textile processes.  Her practice centres on the use of sustainable materials and themes surrounding issues of&...

The Nettle Dress  is a modern fairy tale about the healing power of nature and craft directed by BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Dylan Howitt, released by Dartmouth Films in cinemas across the UK and Ireland from September 15. Textile artist Allan Brown spends seven years making a dress from scratch, using 14,400 feet of thread made from the fibre of locally foraged stingin...

Meredith Woolnough is a professional artist working out of her studio in Newcastle Australia. She is best known for her sculptural embroideries which are an exploration of art, science and nature. The embroideries are created using a unique freehand embroidery technique that utilises a domestic sewing machine and a fabric that dissolves in water. The work explores the beauty and fragility of natur...

Christen Brown was born in Manhattan Beach, California. She first became interested in fiber arts via making clothing for her dolls as a child. After graduating from high school, she continued her education at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles, California, where she graduated with an associate in arts in fashion design.  Christen began her career in the wearab...

Joining Gail on this episode is Graham Stewart, who is an international textile and apparel production fibre specialist. For the past two years, Graham has developed and patented a more sustainable process to bleach and dye cotton called Fibre 52. Fibre52 is an environmentally kind and cost-conscious process for dyeing cotton. It is a simple, inexpensive replacement for traditional and outdated co...

Gail chats to Mistianne Guzman, who has been quilting since she was 25 years old and was going crazy for some color.  She then walked into a store that had fabric and the rest is history.  Mistianne is mostly self-taught.  She not only creates quilts for the joy of it (the smaller the pieces the better), but also for competition, having had her quilts travel all over the world. One...

Ruth qualified as a Graphic Designer at Leeds Metropolitan University, specialising in illustration, in 1986. She then gained a teaching qualification at Manchester University. She has spent many years as an Art teacher working in high schools and tertiary Colleges. She now shares a studio with her partner Stuart Gray at Farfield Mill in Sedbergh, Cumbria, where they work, teach, and sell their pa...

Susan makes sculptural textile work combining mixed-media practices with fabric and embroidery across digital and manual platforms. She exploits the physics of light as it interacts with the structure of the triangular embroidery thread. The light scatters in multiple directions off the sides of the thread, creating different tones and saturations of the base color. She also exploits the science o...

Gail and Debbie are chatting about how Debbie became interested in crafts, her favourite techniques, teaching online versus in the classroom, tips for getting the best from your tutor and how the group zoom sessions work.

Dr Gail Cowley talking about School of Stitched Textiles and how their distance learning courses work.