My Story so far…

I have been stitching since my mum bought me my first cross stitch embroidery kit as a child. I have always enjoyed the relaxing motion of needle and thread through cloth although, as a child, I doubt I identified it in this way. I went on to enjoy dressmaking in my teens and made many of my own clothes at this time. A career in fashion looked appealing so, after taking my A levels, I studied a one year foundation course in art and design at London College of Fashion which I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of. At the end of the course, my love was still for making clothes and embellishing them with print and/or embroidery but I wanted an additional challenge so I decided to enroll onto a three year degree course in costume with textiles. I soon realized that it was the embroidery that I really enjoyed and left the course after just over a year of study.

Soon after, I found a distance learning degree course in hand embroidered textiles run by renowned textile artist Julia Caprara. I went to an open day in London and knew almost instantly that this was the course that I should be taking. I signed up for 6 years of part-time study and worked 3 days a week to fund my course fees and materials. I enjoyed studying on the course and learned a lot about art history and business as well as designing and creating my own textile artworks. However, the course ran into financial difficulties and I was forced into studying the last two years of the course in half the time. I cut down my days at work and went full time on my studies to complete my dissertation and final major project in a year, graduating in July 2012 with the final cohort of students from the course.

Although I had enjoyed studying for my degree, I found that the most obvious omission from the coursework had been any kind of technical embroidery training so my logical next step was to find a course that would help me in this area. After a quick internet search, I discovered the Royal School of Needlework based at Hampton Court Palace ran day classes in a whole range of different embroidery techniques. My first class there was a two day tambour embroidery class with Kate Sinton, which I enjoyed but I felt that the technique was somewhat limited in it’s applications. Next, I signed up for a three day class in Silk Shading with Kate Cross. I learned so much in those three days and was really pleased with ‘Derek’, my kingfisher, when I finally finished him a few weeks later. Silk shading is a time-consuming technique but I also found it relaxing and enjoyable to work.

‘Derek’ my silk shaded kingfisher

After a conversation with Kate during that class I decided to sign up for the RSN Certificate course in technical hand embroidery. I could study this course part time again and still work to fund my fees and materials. I travelled up to Hampton Court Palace once every couple of weeks for tuition and completed homework in between. I worked four different techniques in turn, each technique requiring at least eight days of tuition. My first piece was Jacobean style crewelwork, worked in Appleton’s wool thread on cotton twill fabric. The brief for each piece is quite comprehensive and there are many things that it asks for, such as size constraints, design inclusions and particular stitches. I enjoyed working my crewelwork piece and was quite pleased with it when I had finished.

The second technique I worked was canvaswork. For this piece I chose to work from a photograph of Greys Court, a National Trust property near Henley-on-Thames. I was working there at the time and it is a pretty house with even prettier gardens. I found my canvaswork a challenge and unpicked some parts of it repeatedly before I got them right. It was my least favourite technique of the four that I studied for the certificate.

By far my favourite piece to work on was my third technique, a silk shaded cardoon. I really enjoyed blending the colours and seeing the piece come to life. All the tutors are fantastic guides and so generous with their knowledge. I had quite a few different tutors for this piece as I had to book different days of the week for my classes due to my work pattern at the time.

Silk shaded cardoon

My final piece was my Goldwork goldfish, George and Gertie, which was stitched during the November 2020 lockdown. Having been furloughed from work, I obviously decided to spend my time getting some embroidery done and I completed the certificate by the end of that year, graduating the following summer. My biggest discovery at the end of this course was that I prefer a looser, more intuitive way of working and, although I enjoyed working on my certificate pieces, I was keen to take my practice in a different direction and experiment with what I had learned.

‘George and Gertie’ my goldwork piece for the RSN certificate course

In September 2020, with my certificate course nearing completion, I enrolled onto Bringing Colour to Life at InStitches studio. This was a one year course covering dyeing and printing onto fabric using procion dyes. Classes were one day a month between September and June, however, due to various Covid lockdowns, some classes were added in towards the end of the course to replace those that had to be cancelled earlier on. We started with a reference image, which we isolated colours from to give us a palette to work from for the duration of the course. The first technique we learned was low water immersion dyeing, including family dyeing, gradation dying and colour exchange dyeing, then we moved on to dyeing for texture; tray dyeing, scrunch dyeing and stack and seep dyeing. We continued to explore mark making with dye on fabric and screen printing; including breakdown printing and using thermofax screens. Finally, we experimented with removing colour from fabric using discharge paste, bleach and Milton fluid and using fabric paints to paint and print on top of existing colour. The techniques I most enjoyed are low water immersion dyeing and screen printing, both of which I will continue to use to varying degrees in my current and future work.

In Spring 2021 I also attended a three day eco-printing workshop with Caroline Bell at the InStitches studio. It is a technique that had fascinated me for a while and I had been wanting to give it a go for some time. I learned how to eco-print onto fabric at the workshop but have subsequently also applied the technique to printing onto paper too. I have been experimenting with making some eco-printed concertina sketchbooks recently which have been fairly successful. I would like to add some drawing into them next. I love the colours and shapes that emerge from the leaf prints and, when working into the fabric prints, it is lovely to discover new marks as I stitch.

Embroidering onto eco-printed cloth

During 2021 I struggled with my situation at work and found myself feeling very low and overwhelmed by constant despair. I stopped making art. I stopped making anything at all as I sank lower and lower into depression. By chance, I stumbled across a class online about making three small meditative journals using art journaling techniques. I have been a keen journal keeper for the last 10 years so writing about how I was feeling felt do-able. I had a go at making a little journal for myself and found that the more I wrote about what I was feeling, the easier it became to deal with it. I had felt as though I was down a very deep, dark hole looking up at the light at the top but with no way of reaching it; now the same hole had turned into a tunnel and there was a dim and distant light that I could see if I looked in the right direction. I knew I had to leave my job in order to make progress so, after a bit of soul searching and a conversation with my parents, I handed in my resignation at the end of the year.

It took quite a few months before I would feel anything like myself again and, whilst I knew that it would help me to start making art again, I was feeling uninspired and unsure about how to proceed. At the beginning of May 2022 I joined Gabriella Buckingham’s free five day course ‘Discover Your Art’. Something inside my head shifted with a journaling exercise that she gave us to do and making art felt possible again. I signed up for her full six week painting course ‘Experimental Still Life’ in the hope that it would get me making art again. I had dabbled a bit with acrylic painting during the first lockdown of 2020 and enjoyed it and, compared to hand embroidery, it can be loose and immediate.

Painting with collage

Gabriella encouraged us to get into the habit of drawing and meditating daily. I had already started daily meditations using Insight Timer a few months earlier and I find it helps to clear and focus my mind and lifts me when I feel down. It is an uplifting way to start my day. Daily drawing would be trickier; I was very out of practice and my inner critic was giving me every reason under the sun not to start. My secondry school art teacher had been very dismissive of my ability as an artist and consequently I never believed I could draw or paint. That’s probably one of the reasons I chose to make clothes and pursue embroidery as a teenager. But I remembered that I quite enjoyed drawing when I did my degree and actually got my highest marks for the drawing module, once I got past the initial horror, so I started drawing for five or ten minutes every day. I fell in love with the movement and unpredictability of blind contour drawing as well as trying out some more detailed and considered studies.

Drawing has become part of my daily routine

I hadn’t really thought about still life as a subject for my art before Gabriella’s course but I knew that I would like to have a go at painting some flowers in a vase and trying to loosen up my drawing and painting a bit so experimental still life sounded like a good place to start. When life gives you lemons, draw them! We experimented with mark making, collage, gelli plate printing, drawing and painting over the course of six weeks, with Gabriella giving live painting demonstrations three times a week.  I remember waking up one morning, midway through the course, and noticing that I felt happy and excited to get going with my art making. That feeling was back after such a long time away; I was inspired again and keen to discover all that I could about drawing and playing with paint.

Having kept a journal throughout the course, by the end I knew that it is plants that really interest me at the moment. I am interested in the shapes, colours and textures of leaves as well as the beneficial qualities of spending time in nature for my mental and physical health. I have continued with my daily drawing, spending time in the garden and out and about drawing the plants that I encounter. I have made my own sketchbooks and journals to draw and eco-print on. I have also been doing some more eco-printing and low water immersion dying on fabric in preparation for some patchwork and hand embroidery. Now I am starting a blog to document my discoveries and tell my story.