Textile Talk – Details, episodes & analysis

Dr. Jack Roberts, aka JPR Stitch is a fine artist whose primary medium is freehand machine embroidery. His art is formed from simple organic flowing abstract shapes, but is constructed from a dense and complex web of stitch. His stitchings are a reflection of the calmness, tranquillity and contentedness that he feels when sitting at the sewing machine and creating. Sewing is his meditation and the art emerges from this experience.

“The experience is important to me, it rebalances me, but this sense of balance flows into the art. The colour and pattern have impact, it draws you in. As you get closer you see the complex web of stitch, your field of vision becomes filled with the dense, detailed and overlapping labyrinth of stitch - you get lost in the detail. You might begin to try and visually ‘unpick’ the stitches, following the threads as they loop and weave through the fabric and each other. I hope my stitchings gives others the space in a busy world to find a sense of balance, tranquillity and calmness.”

Part of his ‘process’ has become the sharing of the story – Instagram is his sketchbook, journal and diary. He uses this space to talk about his art, share the making process and explore ideas.

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jpr_stitch/

Website - https://www.jprstitch.com/

Email - hello@jprstitch.com

School of Stitched Textiles - https://www.sofst.org

Helen moved from Art to Art Quilting in 2004 and has enjoyed many international awards for her unique approach to machine quilting and creating art quilts. In 16 years of quilting, Helen has won 16 awards at Houston including the inaugural A World of Beauty and Master of Innovative Artistry.

Helen’s work is predominately pictorial, with strong design and exciting play with colour. She uses her painting and design skills and creates whole cloth painted surface and then with her sewing machine, adds movement and detail into the design with her free-motion machine quilting.

Helen literally draws with her sewing machine bringing her painted images to life. Combining her teaching degree and her Art experience, she teaches from a slightly different angle and enjoys helping even the most traditional of machine sewers to find new direction in free-motion machine quilting and opening up new avenues for their creative potential.

Helen has taught all over Australia and the world including Dubai, China, South Africa, UK, New Zealand, Canada and USA including teaching at the Houston Quilt Festival for the past 10 years.

During Covid with so much time at home, Helen created a 6.5 m long quilt which is all painted with dye and free- motion quilted whole cloth and is the longest quilt in the world made by 1 person and 1 piece of fabric. Since Covid Helen also teaches extensively online as well as enjoying face to face teaching.

https://helengodden.com/

https://www.sofst.org/

Meredith Woolnough is a professional artist working out of her studio in Newcastle Australia. She is best known for her sculptural embroideries which are an exploration of art, science and nature. The embroideries are created using a unique freehand embroidery technique that utilises a domestic sewing machine and a fabric that dissolves in water.

The work explores the beauty and fragility of nature, sparking a sense of wonder and appreciation of the natural world. Meredith believes that the deeper our appreciation for the aesthetics of nature the more eager we are to immerse ourselves in it and conserve it.

Meredith holds a BFA (Bachelor of Fine Arts) from the University of New South Wales, a Masters of Teaching from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Natural History illustration for the University of Newcastle. She has exhibited and sold her work worldwide, is the author of two books ‘Organic Embroidery’ (2018) and ‘The 100 Embroideries Project (2023) and teaches both in person and online classes.

Website www.meredithwoolnough.com.au

Blog: https://meredithwoolnough.com.au/blog 

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/meredithwoolnoughartist 

Instagram https://www.instagram.com/meredithwoolnough/ 

Christen Brown was born in Manhattan Beach, California. She first became interested in fiber arts via making clothing for her dolls as a child. After graduating from high school, she continued her education at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising in Los Angeles, California, where she graduated with an associate in arts in fashion design. 

Christen began her career in the wearable art field in 1986. Her work has been shown in galleries and fashion shows all over the world. She has been invited to participate in both the Fairfield and BERNINA Fashion Shows. 

Christen began teaching and presenting her work in 1991, for quilt stores, and quilt and fiber art guilds on the West Coast. She has been invited to teach nationally for Road to California, American Quilter’s Society, and Quilt Festival Houston. 

Christen has written articles for Michael’s Arts & Crafts magazine, Threads Magazine, and Piecework Magazine. She began writing books for C&T Publishing in 2011. She has authored seven books, designed 3 sets of embroidery stencils, and 2 additional products.

Christen continues to be interested in craft and fine art. She experiments and learns all that she can, specifically concentrating on design and the techniques of embroidery, quilting, ribbonwork, mixed media, and beadwork. Her goal and wish through this journey, is to continually be surprised, inspired, creative, and necessary. 

Website https://christenbrown.com/ 

Blog: christenbrown.com/blog/

Facebook /christenjbrown

School of Stitched Textiles site is at www.sofst.org

Christen's books and products are listed below;

• Ribbonwork Gardens
• Embroidered and Embellished
• Ribbonwork Flowers
• The Embroidery Book
• Beaded Embroidery Stitching
• Hand Embroidery Dictionary
• Creative Embroidery, Mixing the Old
• with the New

• Embroidery Stencils: The Essential
• Collection
• Embroidery Stencils: The Darling Motif
• Collection
• Embroidery Stencils: Crazy Quilt Seam
• Design Collection
• Embroidery Stitching, Handy Pocket
• Guide
• Embellished Art Embroidery Project
• Planner

Joining Gail on this episode is Graham Stewart, who is an international textile and apparel production fibre specialist.

For the past two years, Graham has developed and patented a more sustainable process to bleach and dye cotton called Fibre 52.

Fibre52 is an environmentally kind and cost-conscious process for dyeing cotton. It is a simple, inexpensive replacement for traditional and outdated cotton preparation methods. It uses natural products instead of heavy chemicals, working at lower temperatures, with less energy, less water, and a shorter processing time. This makes Fibre52 a wonderfully cost-effective, eco-conscious and sustainable bleach and dye process.

All this means that consumers will soon be offered a more natural and ecologically sound choice of fabric. With Fibre52, the natural cotton is stronger, recyclable and biodegradable, making it a natural replacement for plastic.

You can find out more at Fiber52 and more about School of Stitched Textile's creative textile courses

Gail chats to Mistianne Guzman, who has been quilting since she was 25 years old and was going crazy for some color.  She then walked into a store that had fabric and the rest is history. 

Mistianne is mostly self-taught.  She not only creates quilts for the joy of it (the smaller the pieces the better), but also for competition, having had her quilts travel all over the world. One of her quilts was used in a yearly calendar for clients. She has completed a skill stage 4 programme with School of Stitched Textiles in patchwork and quilting and has gone on to tutor for them for the last couple of years.  She has owned her own online quilt store specializing in batiks, taught many classes, and is an avid hand quilter. Besides quilting she is a costume mistress and creates professional ballet costumes and crochets and embroiders in her spare time. 

mistianne@thestraybobbin.com

insta- @thestraybobbin

etsy- thestraybobbin

SST Online Textile Courses

Ruth qualified as a Graphic Designer at Leeds Metropolitan University, specialising in illustration, in 1986. She then gained a teaching qualification at Manchester University.

She has spent many years as an Art teacher working in high schools and tertiary Colleges.

She now shares a studio with her partner Stuart Gray at Farfield Mill in Sedbergh, Cumbria, where they work, teach, and sell their paintings. You can find out more about Ruth or see her work on her website. Ruth also tutors an online video course for us on Drawing for Design.

Susan makes sculptural textile work combining mixed-media practices with fabric and embroidery across digital and manual platforms. She exploits the physics of light as it interacts with the structure of the triangular embroidery thread. The light scatters in multiple directions off the sides of the thread, creating different tones and saturations of the base color. She also exploits the science of optics, relying on our brain’s ability to optically mix spots of color in close physical proximity. Further relying on the principles of color as taught by Joseph Albers and Johannes Itten et al, she exploits the vibratory effects of complementary colors and close saturation split complements. All of this creates a changeable optical environment activated by the viewer’s movement from side to side as they view the artwork. The viewer experience is one of puzzling beauty, playfulness and sometimes awe.

Gail and Debbie are chatting about how Debbie became interested in crafts, her favourite techniques, teaching online versus in the classroom, tips for getting the best from your tutor and how the group zoom sessions work.

Dr Gail Cowley talking about School of Stitched Textiles and how their distance learning courses work.