My favourite piece of the entire show   The Festival of Quilts 2025 was wonderful. It was so very good to catch up with friends and students. I was there for 2 days, and it was almost enough.  The quilt displays were fabulous and there were some amazing and thought provoking quilts. From traditional to modern and everything in between. Whilst I can appreciate the skill involved in all the clever machine stitched quilts and the amazing colourful designs and piecing  . .  I am always drawn to the less 'perfect' hand pieced and stitched work.  I am fully aware this isn't a popular opinion, but it is my own.   I taught basic quilting techniques as part of my 4 year Experimental Textiles course. This involved me researching the history of quilting before I could teach it. I was fascinated by the story telling of memory quilts, the beautiful quilts made by soldiers from scraps of soldiers woolen uniforms in the first world war, and the Changi Quilt . Above...

Recycled cardboard packaging woven into with printed newspaper. The completed weaving was then printed and hand stitched - by Shaun West   I have been teaching weaving as part of the Constructed Textiles module of my course Experimental Textiles for many years. When I taught 'in person' we would create a huge pile of fibres, paper, yarns, fabrics and plastics in the middle of a huge table and the group would take what they thought would work for them. We always concentrated on interesting texture rather than weaving techniques. It is quite possible to create something rather special with simple techniques and interesting materials. The work in the first 5 images in this post was created by Shaun West in 2013.  All you need to weave, is a grid or a warp. With recycled cardboard packaging that is sliced in regular intervals it becomes quite possible to stretch it out and weave into it. Choosing to weave with painted and printed recycled newspaper keeps to a muted colour pallette...

Still Life box by Jane Wolfe   I had intended to add a few of these images to my newsletter, but this collection of work is so good, I wanted to write more about them, so I am writing an extra blog post. The three students mentioned today are on the current online Experimental Textiles course. When drawing and painting is not normally part of your practice, it can very daunting to paint and draw a still life. I don't ask students to draw for the sake of making a picture, I ask so they can actively look at line and form. The spaces in between, the composition. Above - Jane's still life. Below - the still life drawing Jane's finished box. The still life was stuck to orange cotton then cut to shape and folded.   To make drawing and painting a still life less terrifying, I tell my students they will be tearing their work up when the they have finished drawing and painting. This helps to take away the fear of what the finished drawing or painting will look like. To make it more ...

Chasing rainbows Having taught many students over the years, from 4 year courses to one day workshops, both in person and online, I get quite lot of interaction via email. News about exhibitions of work, getting onto a higher education course, that kind of thing. I was delighted to receive an email from Carrey Gorney last week. Carry has taken various workshops with me, both in person and online. A few years ago Carry created a body of work entitled 'Burnt Histories' - "I have created ghostly portraits using the torn pieces of lace and faded photographs carried out of Germany by my Granny and her sisters when they fled the Nazis. They were always sewing, even before” Kaiser Bill” led the Germans into World War One. My grandmother had longed to become a doctor, like her brother, to rip up her sewing, to rip open her corsets and to become herself. I have ripped, scorched and singed the last fragments of their v...