Creative Journeys exhibition

More about our artists...

​Anne Paine
From the time I first saw a real patchwork quilt (as opposed to book illustrations in fairy tales), I was hooked on the art and craft of creating from fabric. I collect fabric and books and just enjoy being in that whole environment. I lived for a while in the north west of England, at a time when there were many factory shops still about, and where I did a City and Guilds course which introduced me to options I hadn’t previously considered.  I still have far more ideas of things to make than time to make them. 
And now, I am into making my own fabric, too.  I have learnt how to hand dye and screen print, and I love the unpredictability of the colours I can achieve.  It’s like alchemy and I am moving away from traditional patchwork into more improvisational realms – but I still have a practical streak, so I like my creations to be functional as well and working out how to achieve that is an equally enjoyable part of the whole process.  

​Barbara Lacy-Smith
Coming from a traditional Patchwork and Quilting background using pre printed fabric and following patterns, I had a desire to add more of my own originality into my textiles.
I found a love of taking a piece of white fabric and by dyeing, mark making, printing and painting creating a unique piece of cloth. Using linen and adding free motion embroidery and hand stitching I learnt to add more texture and interest.
Moonshine was born from necessity, needing a piece of fabric to make a Roman blind of a limited colour palette and based on three ceramics by Zoe Kakshmi called Sea Foam.
Woodland Floor and the leaf bowl are inspired by walks around my village. I have experimented with different methods of dyeing and mark making then exploring in stitch ways of creating leaves showing the passage of decay.
Sunflower II is based on the magnificent sunflowers in my village allotments.

​Christine Vlietstra
I am retired but always have been interested in textiles. Fabric alone can excite me to create a piece of work and even thinking of possible designs and how to stitch the piece! I am inspired by so many things, often when walking the dog or wandering around a city or landscape.
Then, helped by my sketchbook to elaborate on an original idea, I gather fabrics together, both hand dyed or printed as well as commercial, and decide how to piece the top layer. While tacking the layers together, by hand, it allows my mind to wander as to how I might quilt it, by machine or a combination of machine and hand.
Quilting, such an important step as it can transform any work! I much prefer hand stitching and will use to complement any machine stitching I may have done. Often lines, straight, curves, and circles.
Occasionally a challenge really appeals.  Free! Nothing is Free! Hence Zero, and in Arabic a dot equals zero. So lots of French Knots to add to the design!

​Deborah McLachlan
Retirement! Now what? I had always done small hand work knitting and cross stitch. With more time available I needed a bit more of a challenge,  patchwork and quilting perhaps?
With that a whole artistic world opened up before me. By coming to InStitches I was regularly presented with a new technique to explore. Picking up a pencil and learning to draw again, resulting in my Swiss lake picture, then learning free motion quilting and precision use of the sewing machine so that the drawing could be turned into an art quilt. A lovely memory of a scout trip to the international scout camp in Kandersteg.
Completing the dyeing course I learned how to colour my own fabric. I discovered I was attracted to the production of abstract designs, by applying dye using a credit card or ice dying, then enhancing the fabric produced by the addition of hand and machine stitching. I love having a go, seeing what appears from a creative session, then deciding what I will turn the pieces into.

​Emma Jackson
My inspiration comes from gardens and the many colours, shapes and patterns found within plants. I like using a limited colour palette most of the time, but have also enjoyed experimenting with a variety of colours within an individual piece.
Most of my work has a sense of order and uniformity about it, probably from my textile origins in dressmaking, then patchwork. I’m starting to embrace a more random and abstract approach to laying down colour, and enjoy the depth of layers and patterns that it reveals.
Using abstract mark making and printing with thickened dyes, combined with structured piecing allows both unpredictability and order to sit together giving a clear, crisp finish to a piece, with hand or machine piecing adding more texture and definition.

​Gillian Clennett
I have been sewing and making things from a young age. I made my first quilt aged 17 for my Duke of Edinburgh award. Having made lots of traditional quilts, I am now developing more original and creative ideas.
I grew up by the sea and have always felt at home by the coast, we have been visiting North Devon for many years and I enjoy the wide open beaches and wildness of this coastline in all weathers. I love the ruggedness of the rocks and cliffs and am fascinated by the colours and patterns found on them. These have inspired the colours and mark making on the fabrics I have dyed and printed for these quilts. 
Looking closely at the rocks reveals more detail; I have enjoyed experimenting with layers of printing, collaged fabrics, embellishing and hand stitching to create smaller, abstract pieces.

​Gini Pocock
As a very young child I learnt to sew clothes, using my mother’s vintage sewing machine. I continued making clothes into my early 20s, then stopped for the next 25 years until I went to a retro fair and bought some fabric. I then had to buy a brand new sewing machine.
I signed up to evening classes, where I realized I could do so much more than just make clothes with my sewing machine. Looking on the internet I saw that InStitches offered workshops in free-motion embroidery. I  have not stopped since.
I like making my own fabric; playing with colour and shapes, images appear from dyed fabric. I’ve learnt how to digitally manipulate an image and create fabric from it. The jacket resulted from this process.
The other two pieces treasure and repurpose old fabric, which may have developed too many holes to be worn or been buried and retrieved. I am not keen on hand stitching, and certainly not a neat hand stitcher, but that works well on these precious imperfect materials.

​Helen Cain
I really love to create. I have lots of wonderful ideas but I struggle to make them a reality. Since joining the Creative Journeys family it has given me more focus and I am looking forward to doing more with the skills I have learnt and making more magic from white cloth.
I went to London College of Fashion and enjoyed making my own clothes in my youth, but lost my way in this regard; life took over.
The three pieces of clothing in this exhibition display basic dyeing skills: painting with thickened dyes and tray dyeing, where you add dye to specific areas of folded or scrunched fabric – I love the variation in colours. Along with screen printing using a thermal screen from screens4printing. I also used Stylearc patterns for the garments.