AFRICAN FASHION AND TEXTILE EXHIBITION AT THE V and A

AFRICAN FASHION AND TEXTILE EXHIBITION AT THE V and A

A trip to the V and A during the summer was the highlight of few days holiday in the capital city, London.

A fascinating array of fashion with some amazing printed fabrics. The history of different countries shone through the textiles. A lot of geometric designs and a lot of block printing. A feast for the eye. Dramatic designs of different pieces of clothing and some intricate embroidery.

What was interesting was the diversity of the visitors. People of all ages and nationalities.
The history of the growth of the textile industry was shown through videos. These were extremely interesting and gave you a background to the development of African fashion through the continent’s history. The colours were amazing and you could feel the heat of the sun in some of the pieces. Well worth a visit.

Autumn in Canada

via Autumn in Canada

Autumn in Canada

via Autumn in Canada

Autumn in Canada

Autumn in Canada was quite an experience. I am used to seeing the beautiful, Autumn  colours of the trees in Suffolk but the sheer scale of the woodland areas in the vast country of Canada was a totally new experience. Journeys along country roads meant  that your eyes didn’t know which way to look. Amazing!

Colours ranging from yellows, oranges, browns to vivid reds were covering the land as far as the eye could see. Added to this there were the dark green conifers which stretch for miles, particularly around the clear, blue lakes.

Even looking through windows from a house at the head  of Lake Kashwakamak was a delight. Autumn colours surrounded by a picture frame!

When out walking, either in the countryside or along the pavements I was collecting leaves of all shapes and sizes and then trying to capture the  colour in simple water colour paintings.

 

Somehow trying to capture the shape and varied colours of each individual leaf. Certainly not an easy task!

Many of the colours are replicated in the patchwork created by the community of Mennonites and the designs incorporating leaves are often created by these talented needlewomen. Certainly colourful inspiration, enabling me to create my own piece of textile work in the near future.

 

 

The Final Countdown.

With just 23 days to go until our exhibition “Deepening the Mystery” opens at the Apex gallery in Bury St Edmunds we at Beyond Stitch are very busy making final arrangements and adding the last stitches to all the new work we have created over the past two years.

You can read more about the exhibition in the March/April edition of “Be Creative” magazine or in the forthcoming May edition of The Suffolk Magazine.

“Deepening the Mystery” opens on Wednesday 9th May and runs until Sunday 3rd June. We look forward to seeing you there.

Happy New Year

Detail from “The Storm” by Tres Barnett. Inspired by the Benjamin Britten Opera “Peter Grimes.”

All of us at Beyond Stitch (Ed, Sue, Sarah, Mandy, Marion, Trudie and Tres) would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very Happy New Year.

So,  2018 has arrived which means that it is nearly 18 months since our last group exhibition and a mere 18 weeks until our next one.  Eeek! So much still to do , so little time. However, we have not been idle in the past 18 months but have been busy producing a brand new body of work to share with you.

With the theme for the next exhibition being The Arts we have set ourselves the challenge of producing, among other work, some pieces inspired by our favourite poems, music and artists.

Being a secretive bunch we do like to keep our new work under wraps until our exhibition opens but just to whet your appetite and to give you a little taste of what to expect we will share some details from a few of the finished pieces.

Detail from “Covehithe” by Mandy Bouttell. Inspired by the paintings of John Piper.

Detail from a wall hanging by Trudie Kram which took its inspiration from a Native American poem.

We do hope you may be able to come along to the see the whole of these and all our other pieces. We look forward to seeing you there.

“Deepening the Mystery” is at the Apex Gallery, Bury St. Edmunds from Tuesday 8th May until 3rd June 2018.

 

Italian Influence

A reminder about our new exhibition titled (Deepening the Mystery) which is taken from a quotation. Francis Bacon, “The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.” The exhibition will be held at the Apex in Bury St. Edmunds from 08/05/18- 03/06/18

iA  recent trip to Puglia in Italy with lovely weather, food, wine and scenery, could be the beginning of a set of textile pieces based on the architecture, flora and fauna. So many different ideas swimming around in my head and so a pad and pencil beside my bed, making sure any sudden thoughts don’t disappear by the morning.

The old towns built of sassi, (houses dug into the calcarenitic rock,) or Truli, (dry stone huts each with a conical roof,)  whether restored or crumbling, were reflecting the beautiful, clear sunlight and just waiting to be explored. 

Many wildflowers, including mauve and yellow croci and pink cyclamen were everywhere, peeping out of crevices in the rough paths. Butterflies, including the rare swallow tail butterfly, flitting around, lizards with their iredescent  colours sunning themselves on the ruins. Red kites soaring above the gorges and olive and almond trees everywhere. All  a feast for the eyes and inspiration for the artist.

Sudbury Silk

 

I love using silk material in my embroidery pieces. It is such a diverse medium coming in all sorts of incarnations: smooth or rough textured, shiny or matt, woven material or loose fibres ready and willing to be manipulated. It dyes beautifully and easily – I use Australian Landscape dyes and my microwave – or if you are not into getting messy then ready dyed silk comes in fabulous colours.

I visited an exhibition at Gainsborough’s House in Sudbury on the history of richly patterned, high quality silk material woven in Suffolk. A fascinating story which begins with the flight of the Protestant Hugenots from France in the C17th bringing with them their skills as weavers of magic material. (A lesson to be learnt here about welcoming people from other cultures to our country?) They set up their looms in Spitalfields in London but after the 1773 Spitalfields Act was passed establishing set wages silk production began to move out of London to Suffolk where the employment gap left by the decline of the wool trade  could be plugged and workers were happy to accept lower wages – another familiar political issue.

Sudbury was one of the places where silk weaving was established with up to 100 looms in operation by the mid C18th and it carries this history in 4 manufacturers who still produce up market silk material in the town. Long before Beyond Stitch was created I discovered Stephen Walters factory shop and bought a bag of remnants for £2 which I am still dipping into. My second goldwork piece is backed by Stephen Walters silk. I bough tie silk at £1 a yard from Vanners shop in pink, blue, yellow and orange. I have a little bit of history on my shelves.

Silk: From Spitalfields to Sudbury is on until 18th October 2017 at Gainsborough’s House Sudbury   http://www.gainsborough.org

 

 

The highs and lows of natural dyeing

Every now and then I do some  dyeing of fabrics and threads with flowers, leaves or fruits I have gathered.  I love that you end up with a selection of similar shades as each fabric and thread takes the dye in a different way.   All natural colours look happy together.

Last autumn my husband was happily collecting and eating freshly picked walnuts, when I realised the outer shells he was discarding were a source of walnut ink.  He kept the shells for me and when there was an empty washing tab box full I covered the shells with water and put them in the loft for three months. I boiled the resulting liquid until it had thickened and then bottled the ink. Then my interest turned to the shells which were left, surely there was some colour in them.  I boiled them in some water, strained the result and simmered some threads and fabric .

I used the resulting fabrics and threads in a stitched piece.

Then my thoughts turned to ink cap ink.  Luckily I found four ink cap fungi in a local wood and took them home to decay. I strained and boiled  the resulting liquid to make ink and then added the left over mush to some water to make a dyebath.  After boiling and straining the dye I added fabrics and threads .  The dyed items are waiting for my attention.

Spring came and the first plant to catch my eye with dyeing potential was nettles .  I collected, boiled, strained dyed all in a morning.

The next idea was a bad one.  At a museum I saw a weaving of nettle fibres.  I’ll try that I thought. I figured the central stems would need soaking so it would strip into fibres.  And maybe if I soaked the leaves before making the  dyebath I’d get a stronger coloured dye.  Early one morning I collected a garden waste bag full of nettles, stripped off the leaves and put them in a bucket, covered them with water and put a plant saucer on top to keep them submerged.  Then I layed the stems in a large garden tray covered them with another one and left them in the garden.

A week later my husband came in and said what are you going to do with that bucket,  I just hit it with the lawnmower and it stinks.  No problem I thought I’ll wear gloves when I tip the liquid out .  And I did, but no amount of washing would get the smell off my hands.  It was foul and it was there for the rest of the day .  I gave up on the dyeing and decided to keep the liquid as plant feed.  As I moved it I splashed my jeans and had to take them off and wash them because of the smell.

The plant feed and the stalks are in the garden waiting for the day I feel daft or brave enough to deal with them.

ML