InStitches Creative Textile Courses
  • Home
    • Contact us
    • The Small Print
    • Privacy policy
    • Want to stay locally?
    • COVID-19 information page
    • About us >
      • The story of InStitches
      • How to find us
      • News and events
      • What our students say
      • Gallery
  • Courses & workshops
    • Courses and workshops at a glance
    • Studio Days
    • Year-long courses >
      • Inspiration to Stitch
      • Bringing colour to life
      • Creative Journeys
    • Textile adventures >
      • Guest tutors 2022 >
        • Claire Benn Acrylics with a textile sensibility
        • Judith Needham - weave your own chicken
        • Polly Pollock - Pebbles & nests
        • Debbie Lyddon - stitched collage 2022
        • Cas Holmes - Layers, lines and image
        • Kate Findlay - Wild Garden
        • Christine Chester - Poetry of decay 2022
        • Caroline Bell - introduction to eco printing
        • Polly Pollock - From the sea
        • Claire Benn - Out of this earth
        • Amanda Hislop - Escape into landscape
        • Alice Fox - Natural Structures
        • Polly Pollock - Twined baskets & pods
        • Wendy Dolan - Inspired by India
        • Kate Findlay - Magical lantern
        • Matthew Harris - From parts to a whole
  • Online workshops
    • Online
  • Shop
    • Workshop Gift Vouchers
  • Blog
    • On our travels

Festival of Quilts 2018: the galleries

21/8/2018

2 Comments

 
By now you will have seen or read about the huge galleries of Nancy Crow’s experiments with monoprint in thickened dye on fabric. The scale and sheer determination was arresting and I particularly liked the effect of the massed pieces and those with a wonderful sense of depth.
​
But we’re going to show you glimpses of some of the smaller galleries. First of all, a disclaimer!: as we were very busy on our stand for the four days these photos have been snapped quickly on a phone, and are just intended to give a flavour of the incredible work involved. We’d certainly recommend that you follow the orange links to the artists’ websites or visit their exhibitions elsewhere if you get the chance.
The Button Box by unFOLD took inspiration from the book of the same name by Lynn Knight and explored different aspects of women’s lives and their changing role in society over time, an apt subject for the centenary year of women’s suffrage. The works, all thought-provoking, sometimes appearing frivolous, highlighted a serious message and evoked powerful memories and feelings of nostalgia, complete with Grannie’s button box to riffle through.
​The gallery was dominated by Christine Chester’s piece #neverthelessshepersisted, illustrating the distance walked in one working week by a fustian worker in the 19th century (91 miles – the equivalent of Manchester to Stoke-on-Trent and back). I didn’t know what fustian was till I spoke to Christine: apparently it was a fabric similar to corduroy, woven with looped ridges in the weft thread (up to 40 ridges per inch across the width) and once woven women had to cut the loops and raise the nap by hand by walking up and down the length of the cloth laid on an extremely long (up to 150 yards) table. I think Christine said that the length of thread she used represents the miles walked, with red bars for significant distances (sorry Christine if you’re reading this, I’ve forgotten exactly what you said!).
Sara Heatherly’s pieces reflected the early years of the 20th century, and the journey from ‘never being me’ to achieving the vote via suffragettes and munitions factories. Other artists explored the importance of maintaining appearances in the days before modern toiletries and cosmetics, marketing aimed at women and using the mending as an excuse not to come to bed! In all a diverse and entertaining gallery on many levels, and one of my show favourites.
A complete contrast, but another of my favourites was Alexandra Kingswell’s More than the Sum gallery. Alex is a former graphic designer who loves numbers, pattern and colour, successfully combining them all into her bright, uplifting, geometric pieces. Based on specific numbers or mathematical sequences such as Pi (the number we all encounter in maths when calculating the area of a circle - an infinite string of never-repeating digits, starting 3.14159265....  ) and Fibonacci’s sequence (1,1,2,3,5,8,13 etc - each number being the sum of the previous two), she makes herself increasingly complex sets of rules governing fabric selection and placement and the results are striking. 
In the images above the top two pieces are representations of Pi, the first a combination of four experiments using different groups of colours eg warm colours for prime numbers and cool for non-primes, and the second using two colours for each digit, taking Pi to 675 decimal places. In each the button is the decimal point. I'm  guessing that this is quite mystifying for many, but for those of us who like numbers and patterns it is fascinating, and I'm still trying to fathom out how she does it. Either way, the results are beautiful. Visit Alex's website for a fuller explanation of her process – I could never do it justice here (and her images are much better)! 
Janet Twinn also makes large colourful quilts, but they are quite different. The author of Colour in Art Quilts (Batsford), Janet dyes and screen-prints her fabric to create a complex palette from which she makes her quilts. Her gallery, Lost in Landscape, explores garden flowers and the Cotswold landscape in the changing seasons, starting with simple drawings which become more complex as she adds layers. Predictably, I have only photographed the blue ones (!), but if you want to see more visit her website .
Art Textiles: Made in Britain is another group of UK artists whose exhibition WILD was very diverse, involving figurative and abstract work, 3d installations and a mix of quilting, embroidery, mixed media, garments and book-making as a means of expression. Unfortunately I didn't take many pictures, but these are three of my favourites - and there are loads more over on their website. 
 Finally for this review is leading Japanese quilt artist Shizuko Kuroha’s gallery Indigo and Sarasa: Pieces of my Life. She uses antique indigo-dyed textiles contrasted with traditional block printed sarasa fabrics in large quilts with complex patterns formed from strips and carefully arranged log cabin blocks. Hazel and I both love log cabin piecing and Shizuko is a master at this. And these are no ordinary log cabins, with precise colour placement to achieve secondary patterning and, despite the rustic, country-style nature of these fabrics, some of the tiny blocks had ¼” strips! The designs draw you in, the antique fabrics providing texture and added interest and a wonderful depth and calmness. I can't find a website for Shizuko but there's a great article about her on this link.
​There were so many other galleries which we didn’t manage to take pictures of including Unfolding Stories 3 by Contemporary Quilters West, which had some interesting work by this large group, and which you’ll get another chance to see at the West Country Quilt & Textile show at the end of the month; SAQA’s Concrete and Grassland  exploring the juxtaposition of the natural landscape and the human constructed cityscape; Fly me to the Moon – a collection curated by Susanne Miller Jones, inspired by the Apollo moon missions and all things lunar and the exquisite work of Gulnara Polyanskaya’s Serendipity club students inspired by world architecture in the Russian Textile Gallery.  And, of course, the prestigious Fine Art Quilt Masters, into which Hazel’s quilt The Space between the Moments was juried – but more about that in a future blog post.
So next time you visit a quilt show, make sure you save time to visit the galleries, alongside the competition quilts and the shopping. There's so much to see all gathered into one place!

That's all for now - thanks for reading!


Terry & Hazel 
2 Comments

Creative cloth

5/8/2018

2 Comments

 
We both produce our own unique fabric to use in our quilt making. It’s all about the total ownership and freedom that comes with the creative process; we have a piece of white fabric, dye it, print it, remove some colour and then add even more: we take the cloth and make it our own. No two pieces are the same and often the results aren’t quite how we planned, but that’s okay - over the years we’ve learnt to embrace the serendipity that comes from working with the bucket and bench.

Each summer we move the dyeing process outdoors and into the sunshine - and yes, the sun does always shine on an indigo day! Indigo dyeing - pure alchemy. Back in July I blogged about our latest indigo day (missed it? Take a look here) so this week I thought I’d show you what I’ve been sewing with one of the pieces we created.
Picture
See the honey comb piece on the left? That’s a full width half metre piece of shrunk cotton, which we rolled up along a piece of chunky cotton string and pulled up tight until it resembled a hair scrunchy. A couple of dips in the indigo vat and that’s the cloth you get! Super easy, super fast...and super fabric!

So what did I make with it?

Each summer, as we cut, roll and label the fabric for our stand at Festival of Quilts I always say ‘next year I’m going to sew something to wear out of some of our fabric’. If you’ve ever visited us on our stand you’ll know I never had.....until this year! Yes, we have been (worryingly) so organised that everything is cut, folded, bagged and boxed ahead of schedule that I’ve had time to sew a top!

If you follow me on Instagram you’ll have seen that over last year or so I’ve come back to dress making with some summer dresses for me

and last year a couple of fiendishly tricky 1930’s evening dresses for my daughter - definitely a labour of love!
I didn’t attempt anything as complex for the indigo fabric but chose a simple top using a pattern I’d bought when we were at thread last month at Farnham Maltings, from our friend Viv of Purple Stitches.
Picture
I thought it was a great pattern to showcase some of our indigo fabrics! Its also got just 3 pattern pieces!
Picture
Multi sized with a couple of length options and printed on good quality paper - so much easier and more robust than the flimsy tissue paper the bigger pattern companies use. Cut out in a flash (does help that the InStitches studio has lovely large, height adjustable tables !) and sewn in a couple of hours
Picture
I like a lined yoke and if you go onto the pattern website there’s pattern options and videos to show you how. No excuses really!
Picture
I’ve made 3 already! So what does the indigo one look like? Take a look...
Picture
I’m really please with it. If you want to see how it looks on then do be sure to stop by and say hello, we’re on stand QIA15 next week at the Festival of Quilts - I could just be wearing it! And you never know - Terry might even have her's cut out and sewn up in time...

Hazel & Terry
2 Comments

    Welcome to our blog! Here you'll find out what's been going on, plus plenty of ideas and inspiration and the odd cake recipe!

    Check back often to see what we're up to - it's great to have you along

    Hazel & Terry
    Picture

    Enter your email address:

    Delivered by FeedBurner

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    #10minutedrawingproject
    And There Was Cake!
    Artists To Inspire You
    Blog Changeover
    Bringing Colour To Life
    Colour
    Craft Ptoject
    Creative Play
    Creative Warm Ups
    Creative Warm-ups
    Festival Of Quilts
    Finding Inspiration
    How To...
    Inspired By Cloth
    #institchescreative2020
    Line
    Places To Inspire You
    Quilt Shows
    Text
    Texture
    The Story Behind The Quilt
    Tools Of The Trade

    InStitches travelblog
    InStitches textiles travel blog
    Picture
    Picture

    Archives

    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    April 2016
    March 2016
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013

    Visit InStitches's profile on Pinterest.
InStitches: exciting courses for people who love textiles, quilting, design, stitching and sketchbooks

Connect with us

follow us on Facebook
read our blog
Instagram inspiration
Pinterest pinnings
newsletter signup
follow us on Facebook
read our blog
Instagram inspiration
Pinterest pinnings
newsletter signup

Courses and workshops

Courses and workshops at a glance
Short courses and workshops
Longer courses
Guest tutors 2022
​Online workshops
​Studio days

InStitches

About
How to find us

Support

Contact
​
The small print
Privacy policy

Our address

Sunfield Studio,
Unit 12, Sunfield Business Park
New Mill Road
Finchampstead
Wokingham
RG40 4QT
We support
Just a Card logo
Copyright © InStitches 2010-2022
All rights reserved.