The Stitch Safari Podcast

The Stitch Safari Podcast is expanding to include live interviews with Australian embroiderers - and this is the first.  Introducing Effie Mitrofanis a researcher, and tutor of both creative and traditional hand embroidery who has lectured and exhibited internationally as well as throughout Australia.

For many embroidery is about gaining a certain amount of freedom from a prescribed formula - their design inspiration may form a narrative, or it may be pure abstraction, expressive mark making, or simply just the coalescence of fabric, texture, and embroidery - and sometimes that’s all it takes. 

Pleated embroidery or smocking, as it’s called now, has always held a sort of mystical allure - it’s a technique that appears complicated and intricate, allowing drape and ease of movement for the wearer, creating an irresistible number of pattern combinations.   But fashion designers and innovative textile and fibre artists are also using this traditional technique to create unique and inspiring...

One of the main considerations for embroidery is the type of needle you actually need and how to care for it.  Needles can either hinder or help during the stitching process, so it’s important to understand the hidden mechanics of their usage.

The three books reviewed for you here in this episode are all written by Australian embroidery artists - showing the depth of innovation and creativity abiding here in Australia.  They are all outstanding - and all for very different reasons.  

Go back far enough through history, and you’ll find that magic and mysticism were at the forefront of everyday living and people's remedy was to use embroidery that became part of their visual language - it was storytelling for all to see, educated or uneducated, but, within that embroidery was power - the power of magic.

World Embroidery Day celebrated annually on July 30, was set up in Sweden by one of the Swedish Embroiderer’s Guilds, with a Manifesto encompassing their vision about embroidery to help aid Peace, Freedom, and Equality.  This episode examines their Manifesto along with a recent YouTube video celebrating World Embroidery Day 2023 and ideas for celebrating World Embroidery Day 2024.

Covid19, self-isolation, and Lockdowns created a revolution in how we associated and communicated with each other - it was a time of re-shaping and re-thinking during uncertain times, but when you think about it, embroidery is a form of connection in itself - through the patterns and imaginative stories captured within every single pull of a  needle and thread through a base fabric, connecting us...

This topic is murky, leaden, and depressing - and I’d just like to know, who’s making the decisions pertaining to what art actually is, because I find that to be very blurry indeed.  It's time to explore this topic more fully from the perspective of a textile and embroidery artist.

Craftivism is a gentle form of protest, it’s not extreme yet allows makers a platform to voice their concerns and opinions about social justice, political viewpoints, and environmental issues.

This is the first time in 110 years that an artwork that includes embroidery and collage has won the prestigious Archibald Prize.  This episode looks behind comments and critics to find a precedent from 1950s America.

It's a tortuous history, the invention of the sewing machine, but surely one of the most important and useful machines ever devised.

After weeks of speculation, we were able to witness the Coronation of King Charles III - and what a celebration of British designers and British craftsmanship, past and present who created spectacular embroidery full of rich symbolism fit for a new King and Queen.

Join me as I discuss five contemporary embroidery artists who make use of both simple and intricate embroidery techniques, using hand and machine embroidery, to create amazingly innovative and diverse stitchery.

A short recap of the history of Canvaswork for context, moving onto the complexity of contemporary Canvaswork, featuring the design work of two highly regarded artists, Kaffe Fassett and Raymond Honeyman.

 ‘Queering the Subversive Stitch - Men and the Culture of Needlework’ written by Joseph McBrinn, Published by Bloomsbury in Great Britain in 2021, is the focus of this episode.

The Bloomsbury Set were a very important group of influencers of their time - an influence that, surprisingly, continues to this very day.  They questioned normative thinking about literature, criticism, and economics, not to mention their modern attitudes toward feminism, pacifism, and sexuality, but most of all created a self-fashioned design aesthetic.  ‘They lived in squares, painted in circle...

I’ve touched on men who stitch before, but the combination of the artistic skills and technical ability of the two men I’m going to feature in this episode is beyond exceptional - and what’s unique is that they collaborate - they live together and they stitch together, creating work that revolves around the reconsidered role of gender - the gay family.

Where would we be without the inspiration and creativity we derived from informative books brimming with crisp, colourful drawings and images?  The Stitch Safari Podcast will now include book reviews pertinent to the topics recently covered.

Sketchbooks are the personalized visual storytelling of an artist’s process that allows us to see behind the scenes, so to speak, to see the successes as well as the failures, that eventually forms into a fully resolved piece of embroidered textile art.

Using either paper or metal in embroidery work is to add to the offering of infinite creative options available for the modern embroiderer.

Zero waste is a philosophy of sustainable upcycling, with the benefit of limiting the impact waste, has on our environment.  This episode explores the work of Jessica Grady, Marian Jazmik, and Jane Perkins - all of whom work very differently with recycled elements.

Aloha ‘Ania - that’s Hawaiin for ‘love of country’ - and that’s exactly what we see here, so plainly and beautifully expressed in the graphically striking, exotic Hawaiin quilts as well as Tivaevae quilts from the Cook Islands.

From the Sindh in Pakistan on the Indian subcontinent to the Amish settlements of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana in America, Stitch Safari now travels into two very different styles of quilts resulting from two very different cultures - one is based on long-held, ancient sewing traditions and motifs using appliqué, patchwork, and embroidery to make quilts that vibrate with energy and colour, the...

This episode of The Stitch Safari Podcast focuses on Quilts of Confinement - quilts made by women who were held captive, namely The Rajah Quilt, and the four Changi Quilts including the Girl Guide Quilt.