Category: textile art

April 2025

The end of April, and that means a few more stitches for 2025.

April, detail

It’s been a busy month, and next month might be even busier.

the end of April

Mostly, as always, a few stitches with no plan or design. Just choosing a colour, threading a needle and beginning. And isn’t that how most days begin too? We set out as usual, never knowing what will happen next.

April, detail

I’m enjoying the spring palette, in real life as much as here in stitches.

April, detail

It occurred to me recently that in four years of doing this I’ve never yet missed a day. If I did miss a day, I’d leave it blank. The point here isn’t to fill a cloth with stitches, it’s to sit and witness time as it passes out of my life. If I forgot to stitch, or didn’t have time (the irony!) then I feel ‘catching up’ the next day would be kind of missing the point. I would leave a blank space to remind me that on that occasion I didn’t slow down enough to watch those few minutes ebb away.

The other side of time is always worth a look. Knots, loose ends, a scramble of thread, but that’s how it is.

The other side of April

If you missed my last post, I’m very happy to be hosting a workshop at the fabulous Making Zen stitching retreat.

You can sign up here:

sign up for making zen here

For transparency, if you use this link I receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you), and you will be helping to support my work as an independent artist. Thank you.

Today is shaping up to be quite full. People are writing to me to tell me I haven’t got much thread in the shop. I know, thank you, I’m onto it. The shop will be closed for a couple of days while I attend to this:

threads for dyeing

Dyeing, washing, drying, sorting, winding, labelling, photographing and listing a batch of thread takes about a month, so thread update maybe towards the end of May, if all goes well.

Making Zen: 5-day event for mindful makers

Bright and early on a Monday morning, and here’s the first of my two Big Newses I’ve been waiting to share: I’m delighted to be hosting a workshop on the fabulous Making Zen online stitching retreat, happening from 26th May, and you can get your free ticket here:

🎨 Get your free ticket to Making Zen here!

Making Zen is much more than just another free event. It’s an opportunity to slow down, tune out the noise, and reconnect with your inner artist. If you’re looking for a quiet pocket of time to make something with those delicious scraps of fabric and threads, then here’s an invitation to somewhere special.

It’s called the Making Zen Online Retreat, and it’s five soul-soothing days (26–30 May 2025) hosted by Kate Ward of Zen Stitching, where 32 (!) makers, artists, and creators share an invitation to slow down, reconnect with your creativity, and rediscover the joy of making with your hands.

You’ll discover:

  • How to turn your scraps and remnants into stunning art (and peace of mind)
  • Cultural traditions in art to explore
  • Why listening to your gut might be the most creative move you make

And I’m delighted to be there too, sharing my session on zero waste stitching.

If you’ve already purchased the course, the Making Zen workshop will still be of value. In addition to the workshops there are free gifts and exclusive extras, plus you get to join over thirty other workshops from some incredible artists including Jody Alexander, Ann Smith, Mirjam Gielen, and many more.

And the best thing about all of this is that – yes! – it’s 100% free to attend.
No strings, no catch. Just art, peace, and a community of makers who understand the value of quiet, mindful making.

🎟️ Get your free ticket here

I’ll look forward to seeing you there, with an open mind and hands full of thread.

For transparency, you will see that this email contains a few links to the Making Zen ticket. These are affiliate links, which means if you later decide to upgrade to the VIP Pass, I’ll receive a small commission (at no extra cost to you) and you’ll be helping to support my work as an independent artist. Thank you so much for signing up – there’s so much to enjoy here.

And PS – for anyone looking for information on pricing (for the VIP pass) here are the prices:

Fast action – $67 for first hour after signing up

Early bird – $97 until event begins

Regular – $147 until the end of the event.

Scraps

This week I’m in the scraps box as I start compiling my new forthcoming course on making stitched samples for sketchbooks. New courses take a while to create, but I do enjoy making them.

fabric scraps

However much I take out of the scraps box, it never seems to get any emptier. It always reminds me of the fairy tale about a magic porridge pot that keeps refilling itself. Not complaining, but I do wonder where they all keep coming from.

I like to use lots of layers in my stitched samples. I think of them as transparent layers of time.

stitched samples in progress

The one below is made from scraps of antique and modern lace covered with two layers of very fine tulle, with some textured cotton yarns couched onto the surface.

whites

I’ve also been painting some lovely patterned tulles:

painted tulle

Fibre reactive dyes won’t work on synthetics, but fabric paints do. I use Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow, which are very liquid and behave more like dye than paint. My Stitch a Little Landscape course has a section on painting fabrics this way. You could even use standard watercolours, if you don’t need them to be washable.

At some point it will all come together nicely.

layered stitched scraps ready to become something useful

March 2025

I don’t pass the time, the time passes me. Every day I watch it go, picking up speed as it hurtles further away.

March 2025

There were daffodils for St David’s Day, and a row of dancing women for International Women’s Day.

March 2025, detail

There was a bouquet for Mother’s Day (here in the UK it’s the fourth Sunday in Lent).

Mother’s Day flowers

There was equal day and night for the Spring Equinox.

March 2025, detail

Some of these days are tutorials on my YouTube channel here.

shamrocks for St Patrick’s Day

Today we have blue skies.

The other side is a reflection of sorts.

the other side of March

Three months gone. A quarter of the year behind us.

First quarter

A reminder that this is the last day for the Early Bird price on my Make a Simple Sketchbook course and my Painted Collage Papers course. Courses are pre-recorded; you get lifetime access; you can download lessons or watch online as often as you like; learn entirely at your own pace.

April is going to be very busy – there is a lot going on, which I will share when I can.

Erratum: PDF25 template

Oh dear.

I guess it had to happen sooner or later…

The keen-eyed among you will have spotted a slight error in the April page of the 2025 daily stitching template.

whoops

It looks like I’ve omitted to erase the vertical line that runs between 9 and 10 on the template, circled in red.

I hope the solution is fairly obvious, but you just need to choose either the vertical or the horizontal line that separates 9 and 10. From the positions of the numbers, it looks as if my intention was for the division to be horizontal.

I wouldn’t mind, but I (and another person) checked these templates about a hundred times before publishing them.

I guess this is proof, if it were needed, that (a) I’m human and therefore fallible, and (b) that everything I produce is hand-drawn.

My sincere apologies for the error and for any confusion caused. Easily remedied, I hope.

And I hope the rest of my week – and yours too – passes without further frustrating errors.

Cherry blossom

The ornamental cherries are starting to flower here, so today’s daily stitching is a celebration. You can see it in progress, together with written instructions, on my YouTube channel here.

cherry blossom, 15th March daily stitching.

School of Stitched Textiles

I was delighted last month to be invited to share my work in an interview with the School of Stitched Textiles.

The School of Stitched Textiles runs various excellent courses for beginner and intermediate stitchers; you can see more on their website here.

You can read the feature about my work here.

SoST interview, March 2025

If you’d like to leave a comment at the end of the SoST article, please scroll down the page to the end of the interview and you should see the comments box.

stitched landscape

Comments are off for this blog post (busy day ahead) but just wanted to share the article here.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did 🙂

Happy International Women’s Day

Intuitive Daily Stitching for 8th March, celebrating International Women’s Day.

There’s a video and brief written instructions for this on my YouTube channel here.

International Women’s Day 2025

Have a lovely weekend.

February 2025

Always a short month, but this year it seems shorter than usual. I’m ending this month with an anniversary, as today is a year since we moved in to our current home.

Home

It’s taken a while for it to feel like home, but it does now and I’m looking forward to seeing our new garden grow a bit more this year. The seeds and ideas that we plant can take a while to yield visible results, and what starts as a scrap or fragment becomes part of something much bigger once it starts to grow. It all happens in its own time.

I’ve enjoyed using up scraps and odd ends this month.

circular form made with a scrap of silk fibre
curled spiral scrap of silk fibre

Running stitch, whipped running stitch, and couching are probably still my favourites. I like lines. Time lines, perhaps.

mid-February

Mostly it’s mark-making with needle and thread.

early February

There is a lovely darn on the edge of this linen, presumably made many years ago. I’m guessing this linen was probably hand-woven on a home loom because the width is much narrower than a machine-made sheet would be, and the selvedge that you can see beside the darn had originally been in the centre of the sheet where two widths had been joined. Someone, long ago and in a different home, carefully mended this cloth for the future, and their future is my present. Time does stand still sometimes.

mended

Holding time in stitches, weaving between past and future.

The long view:

February

And the other side:

the side we don’t show the world

Onward to March. Marching onward. See what I did there.

Have a lovely weekend.

February from above

Mixed media sketchbook

I’ve been working on this sketchbook for a few weeks now, finding homes for all the tiny samples and scraps of painted paper and fabrics. At the same time I’m in the process of preparing to write a new course on mixed media/collage in sketchbooks, and I find it helps to actually make the thing you intend to teach.

handmade sketchbook, 9.5″ x 6.5″

I made the very simple sketchbook, using cartridge paper and some handmade cotton rag paper – it’s just sheets of paper stacked, folded in half, and stitched along the spine. The wrap around cover is cotton rag paper and it ties with some hand-dyed cotton tape that wraps around the button. Mixed media sketchbooks often become quite bulky because of all the inserts and layers, so it helps to bundle it up like this.

Sketchbooks are sometimes regarded as preparation for something larger, but I tend to see them as valuable and inspirational objects in themselves. I see them as a place to collect abstract thoughts in the form of shape and colour, and also as a place to try different colour combinations and design elements. Some of the designs in this book may or may not become larger works, and if they don’t then it’s enough to have them as they are in the sketchbook.

Here’s a quick flip-through. The pages are about 9″ x 6″ ish:

mixed media sketchbook pages

And a closer look (details are in the captions beneath the image):

strips of painted collage papers
simple mark-making with thread on layered fabric scraps (4″ square)
extra fold-out page

I don’t often write in sketchbooks like this one, but I do sometimes like to add a few words of text. I have an old poetry anthology that I cut up to make found poems. I know some people have strong feelings about cutting up books, but I only ever use very old books that have missing or damaged pages. The text serves to remind me of what I was thinking when I made the image, and sometimes it might also suggest the title of a larger work.

stitched sample with found poem
collage with painted papers and text
stitched sample (about 5″ square) with simple mark-making

I like the way samples in different media can support and inform each other. The top sample on the page below was made by collecting and layering fabric scraps, and then the lower image is a collage inspired by the stitched sample.

from stitch to collage
inside back cover, handmade foam stamps and simple drawn grid

As I’m currently taking a temporary break from Instagram, I have a bit more time to focus on structuring the new course. It generally takes a month or more to put one together and I’m still at the thinking-it-through stage, so there’s a fair way to go. But watch this space.