It’s a big YES! How many of us really say yes to life, say yes to loving our art and making time for it? Do you give yourself permission to follow the wonderful journey towards your happiest art dreams? Or do you procrastinate, feel unworthy, block and sabotage yourself, turn the other way? What if you took a deep breath and surrendered – whether you call it good fortune, grace, the divine, the universe or simply self-love – what if you really said ‘yes’ to that?

You may be happy stitching, knitting, collaging, cutting and creating, whether that’s in a structured or more intuitive way. You might make art for your own amusement, for gifts, to exhibit or to sell. But, what if there’s an urge to take it further? What if you’d quite like to make a statement piece that conveys a message, or share your work with the wider world? 

If you’ve ever thought about turning your passion for textile art into a more serious occupation, the first step is to find the right mindset. We asked five professional textile artists, Shelley Rhodes, Danny Mansmith, Woo Jin Joo, Molly Kent and Trish Burr, about their own paths to success and for their tips on getting there.

Find your ‘why’

‘If we want to feel an undying passion for our work, if we want to feel we are contributing to something bigger than ourselves, we all need to know our WHY.’ – Simon Sinek, Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team.

First, ask yourself why you want to step up with your art. Are you looking to feed your need for creativity, perhaps after retiring from another career or to support your own mental or physical health? Do you want to earn a living from it? Are you keen to exhibit your work? Or craving the buzz and satisfaction of creating your own unique work but struggling to gain focus?

Once you’ve worked out your aims, you need to find the willpower to fulfil them. Adopting a professional mindset is quite different to choosing to do your art as a part-time hobby.

Danny Mansmith

Danny Mansmith began his art career in childhood. He was nurtured by his mum, his great aunt and his grandma who instilled in him the ability to see the creative possibilities in the things around them. Danny’s path wasn’t straightforward, but his self-motivation was key.

Teach yourself

Danny Mansmith: ‘I’m an artist who’s kept a conversation going with my sewing machine since the early 1990s. I spent a year at a small art school but I wasn’t very good at following instructions and so I left to teach myself instead. I became inspired to make my own clothes: the idea of looking and dressing in my own style felt important somehow. In the first month, I took apart almost all of my store bought clothes to try to follow the patterns and teach myself about garment construction.

‘Through the years I continued to teach myself how to use the sewing machine. When I finally felt confident, I got my first job sewing for an artist who made baby blankets and accessories. 

‘My boss encouraged me to apply for some local art fairs and that was a turning point for me, helping me realise that I could make my way in the world as a working artist.’

‘Making things makes me happy – working with my hands and creating a space where ideas are free to come out and manifest in front of me. The sewing machine is both an inspiration and the tool I use. My home studio is both a sanctuary and workspace, where I keep my love of drawing alive with my daily practice.’ 

Danny Mansmith is based in Burien, Washington, US and has a strong connection to the midwest and Chicago, Illinois. His solo show ‘We All Become Myth’ exhibited at The Highline Heritage Museum in Burien, Washington, March-April 2023. 

Artist website shop: dannymansmith.bigcartel.com

Facebook: facebook.com/danny.mansmith

Instagram: @dannymansmith

Take action daily

Making time each day to create is the secret to a committed and regular practice. Set yourself some boundaries and rules to guide you. This could be 20 minutes a day, or free play, daily sketchbooking, journaling or daily mindful stitching. Be realistic about the time you have available. Small daily actions will help you to overcome resistance and continual action will lead to inspiration and progress. 

Your creativity is likely to flow more readily if you can allow yourself space and time without any pressure. Unless you’re working on commissions, don’t try to make art to order, or pressurise yourself to be creating exhibition-worthy art at all times. Every action related to your art is part of your practice – just make sure you treat it with a professional mind-set.

Shelley Rhodes

Shelley Rhodes: ‘My daily Instagram posts began as a challenge to make me draw regularly. However, over the years I have shifted slightly, so my post might be a collage, assemblage, printing or mark-making, exploration of materials, a stitch sample, or ongoing work. This habit encourages me to notice and respond, then explore ideas and materials more fully. Some ideas feed into my work, but not always. 

‘Sometimes I simply take pleasure in drawing and recording what I see. In 2022, these posts led to an exhibition of my sketchbook pages The Sketchbook at Llantarnam Grange Arts Centre in South Wales. A few years ago, I was asked if I would sell my daily artwork and this has become a great additional source of income. When I post my work online, I never know who is going to see it, or what it might lead to. My daily posts have increased interest in my work, which has led to sales of artwork and books, exhibitions and teaching opportunities.’

Shelley Rhodes is based on the border between Lancashire and Cumbria, England. She makes mixed media work focusing on fragmentation, reconstruction and repair. 

Artist website: shelleyrhodes.co.uk

Facebook: facebook.com/shelleyrhodesmixedmediaartist

Instagram: @shelleyrhodesartist

Stay curious

Having a professional attitude means developing the positive attributes of discipline, persistence and determination. Both Danny and Shelley maintain their commitment with a daily art practice. If you’re feeling an urge to be creative, then allow yourself the time to satisfy it. Set aside time to focus on making art – no matter what. If you make it a priority, rather than an occasional pleasurable activity, then you’ll create a regular practice through your discipline and determination. 

But how do you focus? With the plethora of information available on the internet, it’s easy to get bogged down with learning yet more techniques, rather than developing those you know. Guard against this temptation and concentrate on what you’re really interested in.

Trish Burr

Embroidery artist, educator and author Trish Burr started her craft when she was a young mother in Zimbabwe. She found cross stitch too limiting and so she began to experiment with thread painting. Because patterns and materials were not available and there were drastic foreign currency restrictions, Trish had to use whatever she could find. She chose pictures from books, postcards and calendars, trying her best to replicate them with needle and thread.

Trish Burr: ‘I had no formal training so I created my own style of needle painting – a new form of long and short stitch was born. This simple method, which I have honed and crafted over the years, is what I still use today.

‘When I moved to Cape Town I was asked to teach at some local conventions. My students struggled with the technique and were generally very nervous of it, so I made it my mission to simplify, simplify. I tried to put myself in the shoes of my students – I spent many months with a doodle cloth and notebook, making notes and thinking of different approaches which would make my instructions clear.

‘I think this was a turning point in my career – as my instructions improved, my patterns became more popular, and the demand for my work increased.’

Determination and focus

‘Another watershed moment was when I began to explore how colour affected my embroidery. Needle painting is known for its beautiful, shaded appearance, and I wondered why some works looked flat and dull while others had a radiant glow. I spent years researching and experimenting with how colours interacted with each other. I realised that there was a whole world of colour combinations – it was time to break free from traditional limitations.

‘Once, I was trying to recreate the vibrant greens of a bird’s feathers, when a man came to fix our television. It turned out he was an artist. He helped me to understand that you don’t need to use brighter shades of green, but if you create a contrast in the greens it will bring vibrancy. My explorations eventually led me to write the book Colour Confidence In Embroidery.’

Trish’s success can be put down to her determination and focus, which in turn brought about fortuitous events that she could not have made happen. The moral is – begin it!

Embracing technology

Trish’s challenges did not, however, end there. Trish had to overcome the era of technological revolution, which without determination could have been another cause for procrastination.

‘When I began embroidery, there was no internet, no websites and no online sales. Over the years I had to learn how to manage my own website, produce patterns in different formats for print and PDF, and ship my products worldwide.

‘I purchased the first version of the graphics software CorelDRAW and began to explore drawing my own diagrams and outlines for embroidery. This was life changing for me. I still use the same software program for my designs – I’ve become adept at drawing with a mouse, in fact it now feels awkward to draw with a pencil. I had to get to grips with social media and marketing. When I published my first book I pasted pictures into a spiral bound notebook and manually wrote out the text, but now it is done with computer software and digital photography.

‘It was a constant challenge to juggle my home life with my ever evolving embroidery business, as well as find time to sit quietly and stitch. There came a time when the increased demand was such that I had to choose whether to expand and employ staff, or stay small and personal. I decided on the latter because I wanted time to do what I love, which is to design, stitch and teach. However, I did need some help. The solution came when I attended a talk where the speaker mentioned the benefits of virtual assistants – they handle all the admin, which frees me up to focus on the core work. My assistants in India are always available to help, and I could not do without them!’

Trish Burr is based in Cape Town, South Africa. She is an embroidery artist specialising in needle painting and whitework embroidery. In the last two decades she has published 11 books, created embroidery patterns, tutorials and videos, and has taught both at home and abroad.

Artist website:  trishbembroidery.com

Facebook: facebook.com/needlepainting

Instagram: @trishburrembroidery

Overcome the negative voice

Much has been written about how to deal with the negative voice in your head. 

On her website, artist and author SARK talks about procrastination, as well as the inspiration, motivation and synchronicities that propelled her to success as an artist. 

SARK: ‘As someone who has sold over two million books in the last 30 years, it may surprise you to know that I too have experienced procrastination, perfectionism and fears about writing or ever sharing my unique gifts with the world.’ 

But SARK overcame that to go on to sell her art products and write many inspirational books, including Make Your Creative Dreams Real.

Author Steven Pressfield has written several motivational books including The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle and Do The Work: Overcome Resistance and Get Out of Your Own Way. He is quoted as saying: ‘Most of us have two lives. The life we live and the unlived life within us. Between the two stands resistance.’ 

If you struggle with inner blocks, then this idea is worth exploring. As artists and many others have shown, it really is possible to put a stop to resistance. 

Internet addiction is a form of procrastination, distracting us from our own work. Do you ever scroll through Instagram while feeling like your work isn’t good enough to share? A great way to overcome perfectionism is by sharing your work, whether that’s on Instagram, Facebook or, like Shelley Rhodes and Sue Stone when they started off, by taking part in a small local exhibition.

Fighting fear and self-criticism

Keeping busy with other things and making excuses is a form of fear that’s often kept under the radar. Do you fear criticism and have low self-esteem, resulting in a feeling of imposter syndrome? Fear can be associated with doing something new, and can stop us in our tracks. But you can use fear as an ally – if you make a start, you will improve and your fears will recede. So take action in spite of fear. As Susan Jeffers wrote in her famous book, feel the fear and do it anyway!

In her motivational book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert says: ‘Fear is always triggered by creativity, because creativity asks you to enter into realms of uncertain outcome, and fear hates uncertain outcome. This is nothing to be ashamed of. It is, however, something to be dealt with.’ 

One sure-fire way of overcoming self criticism is to self validate. If you’re not happy with your artwork, figure out what worked, and what would make it better next time. If your attitude towards your practice needs improving, consider what’s holding you back. If you’re not creating enough time, look at what’s stopping you from making your art a priority. Examine your practice and find ways to overcome your blocks. For a quick start to your work sessions, finish each day by preparing for the next. Choose a thread and thread up your needle – then all you need to do is sit down and begin. What could be simpler?

Negative comments can knock your confidence and make you question the validity of your work. Do you fear negative comments from others? If so, try looking at it from another point of view. The people doing the judging may just be trying to provide well-meaning advice, or they could be envious of your work and want to protect themselves. Artists experience many rejections to exhibitions and galleries, so believe in what you’re doing and recognise that selection can be a subjective process. The key is not to over identify with your work – do keep telling yourself ‘you are more than just your art’. If you receive negative feedback, act like a pro and carry on regardless. This attitude will help you to keep going – soon you’ll find that ideas will start to flow.

Make your art your own

Making art is not a competition, it’s a form of expression, and you should never feel you have to be better than others. We can all make art, and there’s no sense in trying to work your way up an imaginary ‘hierarchy’ of artists. 

Remember, making art is unique to you, so create your art for YOU and YOU alone. If you choose to share it on social media, always create the work for its own sake, not for attention or applause.

Shelley Rhodes: ‘It takes a while to develop your own style and way of working, rather than an imitation of others. I always encourage my students to investigate, test materials and explore their own ideas.

‘I try not to make work just because I think it will sell or please others. Rather, I make from

the heart and to please my own artistic values. Having said that, another challenge when starting out on the path to becoming a professional artist can be the lack of money. I gave up full-time teaching to concentrate on my own work, but worked part-time in an administration role while developing my work, as well as teaching my workshops.’

Molly Kent

One textile artist who has overcome many challenges is Molly Kent. Molly’s work is concerned with representing issues around mental and physical health through rug tufting and weaving. She focuses on our contemporary existence regarding social media and internet living, and how this affects our perception of self. 

In 2018, while at university, Molly had a fall which led to a flashback and a return to ill mental health that had begun when she was 10. She was diagnosed as having complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), due to previous trauma.

Molly had experienced bouts of bad nightmares and strange cryptic dreams. As she researched the condition and understood her struggles, she looked into dream psychology. She was able to use these dreams as a visual vocabulary, to construct narratives within her work that allude to the traumas she suffered and her emotional responses to them.

Epiphanies and dreams

In 2019, her final year of university, Molly produced a body of work Doubt in the Digital Age, which represented her personal doubts within an increasingly digital realm. As the pandemic ensued, her work took on a greater meaning as channels of communication and connection were mostly online. Molly completed her degree and was then furloughed by her employer, so she had more time to focus on making artworks. 

It was then that she created Dream Weaving to record her CPTSD-related dreams and nightmares. She developed her tapestry weaving skills, not only to expand her methods of making, but also as a calm and meditative process, compared to the noisy and anxiety-inducing rug tufting process she’d used before.

Molly has a down-to-earth approach to her status as a professional artist – it mirrors the imposter syndrome or sense of fraudulence that some artists feel. 

Molly Kent: ‘In all honesty, I still find the label of professional artist to be a strange one, I don’t really know what I’m doing most of the time, and feel like I haven’t really got the hang of being a career artist yet. But, from the outside, I suppose it does look like I’m a professional. 

‘My journey hasn’t been linear or even consistent in many ways, most probably due to my mental health. But my CPTSD diagnosis, researching dream psychology and realising the effects of lockdown have propelled my work forwards in terms of the development of the digital aspects of my works.

‘I’m somewhat passive at going out and trying to seize opportunities first hand, so I’m grateful to many others for helping my development as an artist, including award bodies, private and public collectors, and fellow artists who have nominated me for awards or opportunities.’

‘I think the main thing that has helped my progress is simply continuing to create work in the face of multiple adversities, and making work that feels true to me.’

Molly Kent is based in Edinburgh, UK and has a MA from Edinburgh College of Art. Molly has exhibited at the Venice Biennale (2019), and her work has toured with exhibitions in Australia, Scotland and the UK. Her work is held in the University of Edinburgh’s art collection and the National Museum of Australia.

Artist website: mollyhkent.com

Instagram: @mollyhkent

Pay attention to the practicalities

Creating is central to your practice, but artists also have to spend time doing other things to support their work, whether it’s research, testing out techniques, sketchbooking, communicating with others, making applications, administration and accounting, or framing and hanging their work. So it is essential to figure out how to get organised and learn the technical skills you need. 

Though these are all important, don’t forget that your key task is to place the focus on your art practice – give your art a high priority, every day.

Woo Jin Joo

Woo Jin Joo is an award-winning mixed media artist specialising in soft sculpture. Her work challenges the value that humanity endows on objects in a materialist and consumerist society.

When she graduated in 2021 Woo Jin decided to become a professional artist. She felt some trepidation as she faced the responsibilities of balancing time, finances and the other practicalities that go with a career.

Woo Jin Joo: ‘I had initial uncertainties when deciding to be a freelance artist. Throughout my studies, I was completely absorbed in the medium and making – I knew wholeheartedly that my art brings me the most fulfilment. I was unsure about the financial viability of the move and having to navigate a career after being in formal education for so long.

‘However, I was really lucky to be awarded the Janome Fine Art Textiles Award at the Festival of Quilts in 2021, just a few months after graduating – it was exactly what I needed at that moment. It not only showed me that my work is appreciated in the professional world, but also gave me financial support to invest in my own free-hand embroidery machine and studio fees, giving me the extra courage I needed to make the transition.’

Part-time jobs

Initially, Woo Jin kept on her part-time job as a gallery assistant. She applied for opportunities to lead workshops and fulfil her desire to work in education. After a year or so she was able to leave her part-time job and now works as a freelance workshop facilitator, which helps to support her art practice. 

Woo Jin Joo: ‘I always try to prioritise my studio practice but it’s a constant balancing act, with the added task of searching and applying for exhibitions, residencies, commissions and funding opportunities. There are a lot of administrative and miscellaneous tasks taking place behind the scenes to make a studio practice happen, but in the end I’m excited and energised by the fact that I can bring my ideas to life as an artist.’

Woo Jin Joo is originally from Seoul, Korea, and moved to London in 2014 to complete a BA Textiles at Central Saint Martins, and an MA in Textiles at Royal College of Art. In 2021, she won the Janome Fine Art Textiles Award, and was shortlisted for Hari Art Prize and East London Art Prize. 

Artist website: woojinstudio.com

Instagram: @woojinstudio

Get support

Going it alone isn’t always easy, especially if procrastination has been a habit of yours – it can be hard to ditch. You may need encouragement to find the motivation to stick to a routine or get the discipline to put down your phone and stitch. 

This is where the benefits of joining a group can be enormous, whether that’s online or in person. When you interact with like minded artists, you begin to feel at home, motivated and supported.

Textile clubs and groups

Woo Jin was accepted into the 62 Group as an Associate Member, and Shelley Rhodes joined the Textile Study Group, which bolstered her path to becoming a professional artist. 

Shelley Rhodes: ‘Being part of such a respected, national group has helped me to raise the level of my work and to be seen by a national audience. It is a very special textile group, as we work alongside each other on two weekends each year, led by a renowned artist. So I continually learn and develop skills within my practice. Not everything is relevant to what I do, but I think it’s always good to be open to learning and resolving ideas in a new way.

‘The group also requires its artists to teach, which continues to stimulate me and feed into my work. Also, thanks to the generosity of my students, I often learn things when I teach.’

Our artists’ top tips

If you want to scale up your textile art practice, then adopting the mindset of a professional artist is a step in the right direction. The artists we’ve interviewed have shared some of their best insights into practical actions you can make.

Danny Mansmith: ‘Use the internet for simple things, like sharing images on Instagram or joining an art group or co-op gallery. Look for like minded people to connect with and share ideas. It takes time to develop all the skills necessary to be a working artist, just keep at it.’

Shelley Rhodes: ‘I believe that one thing often leads to another, so get your work seen and have a presence on the internet, whether that’s through a website or social media. I was first invited to teach in Australia because the organiser saw my work on Pinterest, which subsequently led onto other things. And when I first started out, I had some work in a small local exhibition. A gallery manager saw it, which led to a solo exhibition. I like to let things develop organically over time. Sometimes you have to pursue opportunities, but often they come to you when you least expect it!’

Trish Burr: ‘Don’t hide your light under a bushel! Set aside your self doubts and think about how much pleasure you are giving others by sharing your work. We’re all capable of much more than we realise. We all have a creative sense; it is just a matter of honing our specific craft. Creating something original is one of the most satisfying and rewarding things you can do. No matter how difficult your customers or followers are, always be kind and helpful. They will appreciate it and become your most loyal supporters. Read the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. It shows you how to live a life of passion and purpose, while literally delivering happiness to others.’

Molly Kent: ‘Try to consistently make and share what you’re doing, be it via social media, or by talking to fellow artists or curators. I find that people reach out when they’ve seen a new work on my Instagram feed, or through my website, which I update regularly. Also, have a sense of balance – despite being known as a professional artist, I don’t make a living wage from my art. It’s a balancing act: working enough to pay the bills, while leaving enough time to work consistently on my art practice.’

Woo Jin Joo: ‘Find a core narrative, interest and passion to drive and inspire your practice. Take time to rest, reflect and research – it’s not always about constantly producing. If you are looking to make your art your business, then register yourself as a sole trader, get a business bank account, keep a good record of your income and costs, and get public liability insurance. Maintain good working relationships with organisations, galleries, and people you work with. Don’t be afraid to put your work out there, you never know what could come of it.’

The power is within you

Many artists talk about finding a narrative. Reported as being one of the greatest films of all time, The Wizard of Oz is a fantasy containing many metaphors that may be worth remembering as we all tread our paths through life. 

When Dorothy reached the end of the yellow brick road she discovered that the wizard she’d sought was an ordinary man who didn’t really hold the power to send her home. Along the way she learnt that she’d already got all the intelligence, heart and courage she needed – the power was within her.

You have that too. So, are you ready to follow your own yellow brick road…?

‘My formula for success was very simple: Do whatever is put in front of you with all your heart and soul without regard for personal results. Do the work as though it were given to you by the universe itself – because it was.’

Michael A. Singer, The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection.

We hope you feel inspired to approach your textile art practice with new vigour and that reading the trials, successes and tips from our professional artists has given you some useful pointers. If you’re still wondering where to begin, read our article Getting started with a new piece of work.

If you buy books linked to our site, we may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookshops.

If you feel motivated to take your first step towards a more professional textile art practice, tell us more in the comments below.

Have you ever felt ready to get going on a new piece of work, but you’re feeling completely stuck? You’re experiencing artist’s block – that feeling of desperation when you’re staring at a blank canvas and need some inspiration. You don’t know where to start.

We’ve all been there. But have no fear! Help is at hand. 

To help get your creative juices flowing, we’ve enlisted the help of artists Cas Holmes, Nigel Cheney, Emily Jo Gibbs, Sabine Kaner and Sue Stone. In this article, we’ll look at some of their artworks and find out the inspiration behind them. 

These artists have generously shared their tips to help you get started on your next artwork. Read on to discover a treasure trove of useful ideas, ranging from research and observation to playing with materials, taking an intuitive approach and allowing your compositions to evolve.

Emily Jo Gibbs

External motivators are a useful way to trigger new work. This might be a brief from a textiles group or community project, a project commission, or a new theme you want to explore. Emily Jo Gibbs made Oil Pastel Sketch in response to ‘Essence’, a 62 Group project brief. 

Emily is known for her delicate still life and portraiture work, using layers of coloured silk organza combined with hand stitch. Her compositions have a considered, graphic quality, using appliqué shapes and simple stitches. The layered organza shapes allow her to create depth, adding life to her subjects.

Optical illusions in stitch

Increasingly, Emily has become more interested in making work from her own drawings, whereas in the past she always based her work on photographic references.

Emily made an oil pastel drawing of her son during lockdown but hadn’t done anything with it, other than take a reference photograph with the oil pastels still resting on the sketchbook page. When she was thinking about the essence of her practice for the 62 Group brief, this image seemed to be the perfect culmination of all the things that excited her about her art practice.

‘It combines all the elements that I enjoy: a portrait of a loved one, hand cut overlapping pieces of silk organza, colourful stab stitches, shadows, and the surprise element of trompe l’oeil.’

The photograph of the drawn image alongside the drawing materials themselves, the oil pastels, became the template for her composition. 

Emily cut out pieces of coloured organza to correspond with the marks she had drawn. She really enjoyed making the shadows of the pastels – knowing that organza lends itself perfectly to create the properties of shade. Despite this, she found the pastels and their shadows to be the trickiest part of the composition. Although they are relatively simple in shape, many layered pieces of different coloured organza were needed to create the realistic effect.

Tips from Emily for getting started

• Try working with translucent fabrics, like silk organza, taking time to explore their unique properties. If you want to cut out crisp, accurate shapes, pin the organza to a paper pattern and cut out the paper and fabric together.

• Play with an organic approach to your work. Cut out some shapes, perhaps related to a drawing you’ve made or simply draw around an object that you have to hand. Build a picture using these cut shapes. Where they overlap, new colours and tones will emerge.

Read about Emily’s alternative portraits in Emily Jo Gibbs: Stitching the tools of the trade.

Emily Jo Gibbs is based in London, UK. Her exhibition The Boat Builders was shown at St Barbe Museum and Gallery, Lymington (2022). Emily is a member of The 62 Group of Textile Artists and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Her work is featured in The Victoria and Albert Museum, The Crafts Council Collection and the Museum of Fine Art in Houston, TX (USA).

Artist website: emilyjogibbs.co.uk

Facebook: facebook.com/emilyjogibbs

Instagram: @emilyjogibbs

Sabine Kaner

A long-time lover of symbolism, Sabine Kaner uses symbols and colour to tell stories and express emotions, explore heritage, identity and mental health. 

The Long Long Life of the Tree is a perfect example of Sabine’s warm, tactile combinations of recycled textiles, wool and felt, combined with printed and painted backgrounds. Layers of materials are connected using hand stitch with thick textured threads, a slow process which allows her to work through memories and knit together a narrative into a tapestry-like form.

The evolution of a tree

In 2022, Sabine was commissioned to create an artwork for the music director of a well-known choral society. The inspiration was a new piece of music inspired by the crucial role of trees as part of the earth’s ecosystem. 

With this in mind, and following discussions with the person who commissioned her, Sabine started to do some research and make initial sketches. She went for walks in the countryside, taking reference photos and looking at the way various trees were growing. Then she dug out other photographs she had taken previously. She gathered reference images showing tree bark, acorns and chestnuts, and intertwined, moss-covered roots reaching out through layers of fallen leaves. 

Sabine then started to plan the composition by reviewing her fabric supplies.

‘I collected together some felt and repurposed fabric. I used an old cushion cover with a strong texture to represent the tree bark. This became the centre of the work, around which I could build up the image.‘

To create the work, Sabine painted the background cotton fabric with diluted watercolour paint. On this base, she attached the ‘tree bark’ fabric. She nestled pieces of appliquéd felt between the roots of the tree, and completed the design with embroidered images of leaves and seeds using thick, textured, looping threads.

Tips from Sabine for getting started

• A piece of fabric can often spark off ideas and inspiration. Sabine starts by sorting through scraps of fabrics in her collection and picking out the colours and textures that she’s drawn to.

• Create a moodboard and play with combinations of materials – lay out your fabric pieces and imagine how they might fit with your ideas, photos, sketches or a project brief. Move them around and add different threads to see how they work together.

• Allow the work time to breathe and evolve. Transfer some of your chosen images and shapes onto a plain fabric and use the fabric scraps to build up the picture. Work gradually, adding hand stitch to slowly connect the work together.

Read about Sabine’s work in Sabine Kaner: Stitching life experiences.

Sabine Kaner’s Hand-Stitched Stories exhibition was held at Museum in the Park, Stroud (2022). Other solo exhibitions were held at Stapleford Granary (2021-22) and 78 Derngate, Northampton (2021). She has also exhibited with @SEAS Brighton to celebrate the Windrush Generation’s contributions to the UK and @wellspace in London to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Day. Sabine is a member of the artist group @Outsidein. 

Artist website: sabinekaner.com

Facebook: facebook.com/sabinekaner

Instagram: @sabinemake

Sue Stone

Sue Stone is an avid photographer, and she uses her collection of photos to help her create textile stories. Her compositions are often a mixture of fact and fiction, combining real and invented people and places, and often merging the past with the present. Sue’s mixed media and stitched work explores imagined journeys and creates narratives about family, history and life. 

A major source of inspiration for Sue is her family photo album, but she also takes hundreds of photos of the details, textures and patterns that surround her. She is drawn to the overlooked details like the textures and patterns found on buildings or in the street, as well as brickwork, signs and colourful splashes of bold, but often transient, graffiti art. By including these details in her work, she brings to life the locations she depicts.

An expression of inner turmoil

Which Way Now? was made in 2020 during the pandemic, when Madrid was in the news as it was one of the places hard hit by the virus. Sue visited this beautiful, vibrant place for the first time in autumn 2019 when her work was included in the World Textile Association’s Invited Artists Salon exhibition, The Essence of Textile. She fell in love with the city during this idyllic trip.

Sue’s starting point was a photo she’d taken of an isolated crumbling and ruined building in Madrid, with graffiti on its walls and on the fence surrounding it. 

When she first started it, Sue wasn’t sure which direction the artwork was going. She just needed to keep her hands busy at the time. For this work, she adopted a new, immediate way of working – drawing freehand with a Pilot Frixion pen, directly onto the fabric.

‘Amid the confusion and chaos created by the Covid-19 virus, there were occasional glimpses of hope, swiftly followed by fear and dread. The slow hand stitching of the graffitied fence in the foreground proved to be therapeutic.’

Stitching gave Sue some quiet thinking time, and she realised that the crumbling building was a reflection of her state of mind – the conversation she was having with herself in a time of turmoil – and this led to a depiction of herself within this crumbling and confused environment, with flashes of hope hidden within.

Tips from Sue for getting started

• Never dismiss any of your ideas. Jot them all down in a notebook and they can become a reference library for you to dip into for inspiration if you get stuck.

• Take photos of anything and everything around you. If something catches your attention, photograph it. Make sure you organise your photo collection, perhaps into themes, so you can locate images easily when you need to.

• Simplify your starting images into a simple line drawing. This will stop you from getting overwhelmed by detail at the outset – you can always add more detail later.

Discover more about how Sue’s work comes together in Sue Stone: Where top textile artists look for inspiration.

Sue Stone is based in the UK. Her work has been exhibited worldwide, including at her solo show Shifts and Allusions, at The Hub, Sleaford (2023), at the 12th From Lausanne to Beijing International Fibre Art Biennial Exhibition (2022), and as part of the 62 Group’s exhibition at the Knitting & Stitching Show (2022). She is a member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists, and a Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen. 

Artist website: womanwithafish.com

Facebook: facebook.com/suestone.womanwithafish

Instagram: @womanwithafish

Nigel Cheney

The sculptural textile work Corporal William Holman grew from the curiosity Nigel Cheney had about his great grandfather, and what it meant to serve your country in the First World War. 

Corporal William Holman was born in 1882 and died at the age of 35 in France, making the ultimate sacrifice in the First World War. The artwork was first created for Nigel Cheney’s solo show, Decorated, at the Hub in Sleaford, in 2017, and has since undergone many reincarnations. 

Starting all his projects with a period of in-depth study, Nigel likes to collect a mountain of source materials. As part of this process, he gathers objects, archival images, family documents, ephemera and associated literature, poems or novels. And he finds that eBay is the perfect place to collect items linked to his theme. 

Nigel began by exploring what little he knew of Corporal William Holman’s life, and the widow and children he left behind. Immersive research helps him to decide what lens to examine his theme through, and in this case, it soon became apparent that he was interested in memory.

‘All my research implied that his widow, the incredible Nellie Holman, did not dwell in the past. The photograph of him in uniform was always in pride of place on the mantle, even though her sadness was not dwelt on and certainly never spoken about.’

Research, collect, collage

Nigel began by digitally recording military records, the few surviving family photos, and images of medals, medal ribbons and correspondence. Then he collaged paper prints and scans, allowing an intuitive response to overtake historical accuracy. 

Interested by the residual and collective grief left behind after so much loss, and how small scraps of history become distorted and incomplete as time passes, Nigel realised that most of what he knew about his great grandfather was factually incorrect. He didn’t understand what the medals signified or how William Holman’s life story could be contextualised amidst his regiment or his hometown, Market Harborough.

‘For me, memory isn’t linear but there are elements that repeat like a musical refrain, often at the most inopportune moments.’

Nigel enjoys experimenting with a variety of techniques including drawing, digital printing and low tech image transfer methods. But fabric and stitch allow him to be at his most expressive, so he manipulated the collected imagery using a computer and printed them onto fabric, ready to stitch into using hand stitch and digital stitch techniques. He had no interest in using genuine uniforms from the First World War, so he sourced and dissected new ex-army stock uniforms. The difference in cut and construction became a test – would the viewers be aware of the historical inaccuracies? 

He had gathered the ingredients. Now it became a matter of moving the composition’s elements around to achieve a balance.

‘I felt the making needed to be somewhat crude – function came foremost over couture techniques.’

While seeming like a straightforward task, fighting with a small domestic sewing machine to put back together the parts of the uniform, along with the stitched fragments, became exhausting. 

Once the work was assembled, the final task was to stencil Corporal William Holman’s service number over all the precious elements of this ‘body bag’. A uniform is not a delicate piece of cloth, and Nigel wanted to show that the scars that deface the depictions of nostalgia are as important as the medals that decorate them. 

Tips from Nigel for getting started

• Working with memories is powerful. Just looking at a family photo or touching a favourite old garment can be overwhelming. So be kind to yourself. Sometimes you can work around a problem – are there similar second-hand fabrics that remind you of something, without having to work with a precious heirloom?

• It’s vital to set a lens through which to view your work. What is your intention? Does it need to be factually correct? Or are you expressing your own interpretation? Decide who the work is for and how you want those related to it, biologically or emotionally, to respond to it. It can be tricky to work with personal information, so be inclusive in how you gather information. You may be able to use official historical documents, data and text within your narratives while taking care not to publicise the data of living people. But if you are using archive sources, get permission to include them in your work.

• Colour can be the most effective communicator. It can help set the tone for what you want to convey. If the work isn’t how you expected – whether delightful, sombre, brooding, playful or nostalgic – then try changing the colour balance.

• Above all, make mistakes. This is the true path to creativity. And sometimes cutting up your work can be the best approach. Nigel has never found a ‘disastrous sample’ that couldn’t be improved with some pruning!

To find out more about his practice, read Nigel Cheney’s interview.

Nigel Cheney is an embroiderer based in Market Harborough, Leicestershire, UK. He was a finalist in the Hand and Lock Embroidery Prize, Open Textile Art category, 2022. He held the position of Lecturer in Embroidered Textiles at National College of Art and Design, Ireland, for over 20 years before retiring to live in his native Harborough.

Artist website: nigelcheney.com

Facebook: facebook.com/nigel.cheney

Instagram: @nigelcheney

Cas Holmes

In her work, Cas Holmes seeks to capture the memory or atmosphere of a place or a moment. She gathers materials, drawings and written references during her travels. And by interacting with these collections, she can evolve the meanings and stories behind her work. 

Travel has always been an important part of her creative inspiration, however, just as Cas was starting to move again after the pandemic lockdowns, her partner, Derek, had a stroke. 

She had to find a new balance, as both artist and carer, and so she began to adapt her work to a smaller landscape – her home surroundings. However, her process remained the same: Cas still sketches and makes notes to record her travels, even within this smaller environment. In the quieter times, she stitches or spends an hour marking and layering her collections of cloth and paper. 

During this time, Cas has gained a new-found respect for the often-overlooked aspects of everyday life, like the edges of the footpath on her daily walks in the park, and the places where the home and garden meet the outside world.

The Garden

The Garden is one of a series of pieces made during her transition from watcher to worker in the garden. She took the time to witness the garden in all its glory and began to notice the gardening activities that needed her attention. These observations became the source of inspiration for her artwork.

‘In that lovely summer of 2022, I sat and sketched in the sunshine as we healed and found a new way of being in the garden together. As Derek began to recover he talked about the things that needed to be done in the garden (and those I should leave alone).’

Cas often uses the methods of deconstruction and reconstruction, which have become a vital part of her creative process both physically and mentally. Working on two or three projects at once, she used offcuts from old gardening books, a section from a tray cloth and colour image transfers of the plants growing in her garden. 

Her work has always been informed by the simple things, like drawing, talking, observing, and then threading these connections with stitch. Cas finds poetic solace in the minutiae of the everyday things she explores, connecting hand, eye and mind through sketch, paint and stitch.

‘When I look at The Garden it takes me back to that healing moment in time. Exploring and recording a local patch of land, a garden or a small space in depth can be a rich resource for your investigations.’

Tips from Cas for getting started

• Take the time to record the atmosphere of a place – draw, make notes, focus and be present

• Observe the small details. Try using a magnifier or the zoom function on your camera or smartphone.

• Make a collection of ‘finds’ from the place. Perhaps you could record the changes you observe through the year. Create a storyboard or a diary of the things you discover, and note down your thoughts including the visual qualities, colours and shapes.

For more about Cas’ work, and how she used found and vintage items read Cas Holmes: Found objects in textile art.

Cas Holmes is based in Kent, UK. She is the author of several Batsford books, including Embroidering the Everyday (2021), and a member of Art Textiles: Made in Britain textile group and the Society for Embroidered Work. Her exhibitions include Gypsy Maker 4: Places, Spaces, Traces, which was exhibited in Belgium and toured the UK in 2020-23.

Artist website: www.casholmes.co.uk

Facebook: facebook.com/casholmestextiles

Instagram: @casholmestextiles

Key takeaways

Quick tips for getting started:

• Gather a collection of images of inspirational details and organise them into themes, as Sue Stone does.

• Play with your collection of fabric scraps to generate ideas, as suggested by Sabine Kaner.

• Spend time researching and gathering images and content related to your subject, like Nigel Cheney, then filter your collection to focus on what is really important to you.

• Explore working with new materials, such as silk organza. Emily Jo Gibbs enjoys the colour variations achieved by layering this delicate, translucent fabric.

• When studying a place you want to represent in stitch, be observant. Cas Holmes always takes the time to look at the details; to draw, make notes and record the atmosphere of a place.

• Create work in response to a brief from an artist group or community project, or commit to sharing your work with a friend or online. Try looking for online challenges which encourage you to create new work and share it on social media, such as Seam Collective’s #SeptTextileLove.

What tips do you have for getting started on a new artwork? Let us know in the comments below.

Not being able to stitch due to illness or injury is as crippling to the mind as it is to the body. I learned this firsthand in 2021 when a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis came crashing into my world. My hands and wrists had become so inflamed, I couldn’t twist the top off a water bottle, let alone hold a needle and thread.

Fortunately, I found a doctor who understood both my disease and artistic heartache, and together we figured out a plan to regain the use of my hands. Today, I stitch more slowly, and I can’t last as long, but I’m thrilled to say I’m still stitching.

I also have a new-found appreciation for my fingers and joints and the dexterity I still possess. As they push a needle through fabric, knot a thread or snip a frayed edge, I’m grateful for their continued partnership in helping me tell my stories in stitch.

We’ve gathered five textile artists who have also experienced illness challenges, and they’re sharing the works they created in response to those journeys. They describe how stitching helped support them during and after difficult times, as well as the physical and emotional impact stitching had in their recoveries.

Sonja Hillen starts us off with her stitched response to her husband’s cancer journey. Michelle Ligthart then shares her stitched book chronicling her decision to have her breast implants removed. Haf Weighton follows with her scary and ironic experience of becoming ill while working on a textile commission for a hospital. Linda Langley next describes picking up needle and thread to process her mom’s breast cancer diagnosis. And Jane Axell closes by sharing how mindful stitching helps keep illness at bay.

We’re grateful to each of these artists for sharing their stories and work in such candid and inspiring ways.

Sonja Hillen – A caregiver’s view

When a life-threatening diagnosis comes out of nowhere, it’s not just the patient who’s tossed about. Caregivers also experience their own challenges. Such was the case for Sonja Hillen when her husband was diagnosed with cancer and given about eight years to live. Their children were 12, 10 and 6 at the time, and it would be a five-year odyssey for them all. Fortunately, a stem cell transplant was successful, and Sonja’s husband is cancer-free today.

Countless doctor appointments and scary hospital stays happened across those five long years. And Sonja turned to stitch to help process her and her husband’s unfolding story.

‘We processed all the doctor conversations and treatments while trying to keep the family going as best possible. I felt like I was living on adrenaline, so I started stitching to help me rest a bit while sitting by my husband’s bed. For me, embroidery means working with the human dimension, and when I’m stitching, I’m in a bubble where time slows down.’

For better or for worse is a collection of five pieces showcasing pivotal times and places across what Sonja calls ‘our cancer rollercoaster’. Though each panel features simple black embroidery on a white linen background, the stories are massively poignant. Especially her depiction of her husband’s knit hat.   

‘I wanted the images about being sick to be as clear as possible and to embroider what needed the most attention. Every night when my husband went to bed, he threw his knit hat at the corner of the bed. He was bald from chemotherapy and very thin, so he got cold quickly. In the morning, he’d put the hat right back on. It touched me very deeply, and I knew I had to capture it in stitch.’

Sonja’s attention to detail and purposeful exclusion of people makes her work poetic and recognisable. For example, she chose the sofa and personal items to emphasise how small one’s world becomes when sick. The exam table paper accentuates the importance of a correct diagnosis and treatment plan. The tangle of hoses and pumps in a hospital room demonstrates the severity of treatment.

‘The last work is a waiting room filled with chairs, and one chair stands out. That’s my husband’s chair, as it’s his story. Still, all the other seats show how many other people are sick and dealing with their own stories.’

Sonja’s husband says her work was more about her cancer experience than his. He only served as ‘the occasion’ and seeing events through her eyes was ‘beautiful, powerful and impressive’.

Sonja is based in Nijmegen in The Netherlands. After working as a nurse for years, she attended the Nieuwe Akademie Utrecht (art academy) and graduated five years later. She is most proud of her group exhibition called Kwaadaardig Mooi (Viciously Beautiful) at the Tot Zover Museum (Amsterdam) chronicling their collective cancer journeys.

Website: www.sonjahillen.nl

Facebook: facebook.com/sonja.hillen/

Instagram: @sonja.hillen1

Michelle Ligthart – A woman’s choice

At age 60, Michelle Ligthart made a big decision: to voluntarily have her breast implants removed. She wasn’t ill, but Michelle didn’t want to worry about becoming ill in the future. To be sure, it wasn’t an easy decision. So, she chronicled her physical and emotional journey by creating a textile book called Book of Breasts.  

The book’s pages are filled with imagery bearing unique meanings and varied textile art techniques that Michelle learned in TextileArtist.org’s Stitch Club. For example, the book’s cover features a trapunto technique featured in Julie Booth’s workshop. Many breasts in varying sizes are featured, and some have a scar.

‘When I started the project, I was obsessed with breasts. I’d even stare at other women’s breasts. I tried to reflect that obsession across three pages of text. The first page features a neutral definition of breast, and the second and third are filled with every synonym of breast I could find in alphabetical order. Some are funny, and some not so much. I stitched the synonyms for “tiny breasts” in red because that would be me after surgery.’

Michele also used rust printing techniques learned in Alice Fox’s workshop. That page features two breasts with scar stitches reflecting Michelle’s need to prepare herself for the stitches she would have after surgery. She also attached her first bra across two pages.

‘I got my first bra when I was 37, and I’ve treasured it for more than 20 years. My partner gave it to me, after telling the salesperson he needed a bra that fit “a handful”. It has some holes to reflect my saying goodbye to my dear breasts and bras.’

Michelle also included the bag in which she brought the implants home with her. She sewed a red cross onto the storage bag, and then she created stitched covers for the implants themselves that had emoticons on both sides to reflect her mixed emotions about the surgery. The book ends with a colourful page on which she stitched the words ‘proudly flat again’.

A week after her surgery, Michelle hesitantly shared her work in the Stitch Club members’ area. She worried members who were recovering from breast cancer might be hurt, since she wasn’t ill and had chosen to have implants in the first place. But the community’s response was overwhelmingly positive.

‘My decision really affected me, so making the book helped me process my emotions. It wasn’t just something to keep my hands busy. It was an artistic way to create meaning, and the slow stitching helped me reflect on the stages I went through preparing for my operation. I also wanted to create something beautiful out of my sadness.’

Michelle lives part of the year in the Netherlands, and the other part is spent touring South America with her husband in an offroad camper. She started stitching when she joined TextileArtist.org’s Stitch Club, and now enjoys collecting old linens for her work. She plans to create a new textile book in the future.

Haf Weighton – When the artist gets sick

Imagine being commissioned to create a commemorative work for a hospital, only to find yourself hospitalised with an unknown illness during its creation. That’s what happened to Haf Weighton when the Rookwood Hospital in Cardiff, UK, asked her to design a work celebrating its history.

Haf’s symptoms stumped doctors, and ironically, she spent a month in a hospital run by the same trust that runs Rookwood. Eventually, she was diagnosed with a rare form of pneumonia that took over a year’s recovery. She stitched throughout that entire illness journey.

A tiled floor mosaic in Rookwood’s entryway bearing the word ‘Salve’ served as Haf’s starting point. Haf researched its meaning and discovered it roughly translated as ‘heal’ in most languages.

‘I mainly used hand stitch because I was working from my hospital bed. I decided I needed to find a way to heal that didn’t solely rely on modern medicine. This is how I learned the true meaning of “salve” in my illness journey. Stitching kept me strong through it all, and my creativity truly helped me recover.’

The background fabric in Rookwood is recycled cotton sheets. Haf thought sheets were particularly significant for a hospital where patients spend days, months or even years in their beds. Haf first painted the sheets with acrylic paints and then heat transferred her drawings onto the fabric. She then machine-stitched pieces together, followed by detailed hand stitching embellishment.

‘Recovering from an illness isn’t about taking medicine. It’s about finding ways to look after and be kind to yourself. So, for me, “salve” is about stitching. And I literally used that commission to stitch my health back together.’

While Haf beat the odds with pneumonia, she tested positive for Covid in 2022. It was frightening having already battled respiratory issues. But she again turned to making art, including an online daily drawing challenge that challenged her to sketch what she could see from her home.

‘We spent so much time in our homes during the pandemic. So, when I was sick with Covid, I reflected on the comfort of our homes. I used my creativity to help me recover by turning those sketches into stitched pieces. That body of work has now grown into an upcoming solo exhibition called “Cysur” which is the Welsh word for “comfort.”

Haf is a Welsh-speaking artist living in Penarth, South Wales. She has exhibited her work globally, and she also runs workshops for both Cardiff and Vale University Health Boards and the National Museum of Wales at Oasis, a centre for refugees and asylum seekers. Haf is a juried member of the Society for Embroidered Work and The Society for Designer Crafts.  

​​Website: www.hafanhaf.com

Facebook: facebook.com/hafanhaf

Instagram: @hafweightonartist

Linda Langley – Diagnostic layering

Linda Langley was working as a radiographer when her mother was first diagnosed with breast cancer. Having much experience in mammography, Linda knew her mum faced a serious battle.

Sadly, despite treatment, her mum’s cancer ultimately spread, resulting in bone cancer and brain secondaries. Linda’s mom passed away in 1984.

‘I was very aware of the journey most breast cancer patients take. She was only 67, and while it was a long time ago, I still remember her dearly.’

Linda joined TextileArtist.org’s Stitch Club during the height of Covid. She was enjoying the various workshops, but when she saw artist Jenny McHatton’s presentation, Linda knew she wanted to use Jenny’s creative challenge to memorialise her mum.

The workshop instructed members to gather a variety of materials and then shared techniques for gathering and twisting those materials in different ways. Boro stitching was then used to help secure the fabrics, as well as add additional surface design. Linda chose a variety of natural fabrics from her collection to twist and stitch. And the base was from an old linen napkin she had received from a Canadian friend.

‘I have learnt to love layers, and therefore, lace and sheers are prominent in my collection. I thought they were especially useful in depicting breast tissue. I knew very little about Boro stitching, so that was a challenge. ’Linda’s piece My Mum’s Breast includes a lateral view of the breast akin to what a mammographer would see. Linda says lateral views are especially important as they visualise the lymph system at the breast axillary area which can sometimes show if cancer cells have spread to other areas. Linda sought to create the breast’s complexity using twisted fabric layers and stitch to recreate its many layers, blood vessels and nerves that go in all directions.

‘I loved making this, especially thinking it could encourage women to have mammograms. And I was thrilled by other members’ positive feedback. I hadn’t worked with textiles for a long time due to life’s challenges. And my education was incomplete due to financial restrictions. Members’ feedback gave me the confidence I needed.’

Linda is retired and resides in Croxley Green, Hertfordshire. She especially enjoys the research aspect of embroidery, as well as detail and texture. Other hobbies include cooking and gardening.

Jane Axell – Stitching to heal

Jane Axell experienced a variety of illnesses throughout her childhood, including recurrent chest infections, psoriasis, and some anxiety and depression. Traditional medical treatments were sought over the years, but none seemed to have lasting effects. So as an adult, Jane turned to natural therapies, including courses in reiki and crystal healing. She also explored Christianity, Buddhism and other healing modalities.

In 2007, Jane started working with The Sanctuary of Healing (Lancashire, UK), which delivers a variety of healing frequencies, such as crystal energy and light and colour frequencies. Her health started to improve dramatically, and she hasn’t had a chest infection since 2009. Other ailments have also healed.

‘I learned how stress plays a major role in illness. Stress hormones create an invisible field of energy that surrounds your body and turns off natural self-repair mechanisms. So, you need something to trigger a relaxation response in your mind so your body can heal itself. For me, one of my main triggers is creating textile art.’

Jane is a member of TextileArtist.org’s Stitch Club where she participates in as many workshops as possible. She also attends a monthly stitching workshop, a monthly felting group and a weekly crafting group.

Soft, red rose started as a contribution to an upcoming exhibit for Jane’s local stitching group. Artists were asked to create a red rose (the emblem of Lancashire) in a hoop for an exhibition at Astley Hall. Shortly after Jane started composing her work, she viewed Jenny McIlhatton’s Stitch Club workshop, which featured folding, rolling, twisting and loosely stitching different fabrics. It was exactly what she had been attempting to do!

‘The techniques gave my work texture, loft and character. I used all kinds of scraps from my fabric stash – from curtain samples to fine cottons and scrims. I love their soft fraying. I also adore silk velvet and used that for the soft folds of the rose. A piece of hand-dyed red silk is in the centre.’

The stem and leaves were created from a piece of printed cotton covered with loop stitches, and red French knots also added texture. In addition to being pleased with the result, Jane said it also boosted her creative confidence.

‘I think by indulging in any kind of creative practice, you can forget your cares, and enter into a sense of wonder and playfulness that can be very healing. Honouring your creativity is your way of bringing love into the world. The secret is to carry that lovely feeling back into your life once your play session is over!’

Jane lives in the picturesque Ribble Valley in Lancashire, UK. She is a writer for TextileArtist.org where she loves interviewing and writing about a wide variety of textile artists. Jane participated in her first exhibition called Colours, Textures and Heritage of Lancashire (2022) with Ribble Creative Stitchers and the Bolton Stitch Group.

Instagram: @jaxtextiles

Key takeaways

• Textile art doesn’t have to be pretty to be therapeutic. Sometimes stitching about what hurts helps us process the challenges we face. As Jane Axell noted, stitching can help relieve stressors that lead to pain and illness. 

• Don’t be afraid to share what you create in response to an illness experience. The meanings in your work can connect with and inspire others facing similar challenges. Both Michelle and Linda were nervous about sharing their work, but the response was positive and encouraging.

• A caregiver’s experience can be as overwhelming as that of the person experiencing illness. Like Sonja, consider using stitch to help you slow down and breathe, as well as process what’s going on around you.

• Be kind and forgiving to yourself when an illness prevents you from physically picking up a needle and thread. Focus on recovery first and perhaps journal ideas for future stitching projects when you feel better.

Textile artist Stacy Chapman stitched a remarkable response to her mother’s hair loss from alopecia. You’ll be amazed by Stacy’s stitchwork and use of her own hair.

Do you ever longingly admire the textile art of others, but have no idea how to start creating that yourself?

Do you put up barriers to starting and if so, where do you find that helping hand to get you off the ground?

‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with one small step’, said Dao De Jing.

If you’ve lost confidence and haven’t picked up a needle or sat at a sewing machine for a while, taking that step can feel momentous.

But, even the most experienced artists had to start somewhere. No one was born with a needle and thread in their hand. Perhaps you grew up in a creative family, had encouraging teachers or felt a pull to attend art college? Or maybe you’re only finding the time or confidence to pursue your passion after parenthood or retirement?

Is creativity born or bred? Can anyone become a textile artist? We asked one of the most dedicated Stitch Club members to share her story in a quest to find out.

Heléne Forsberg: finding happiness in making

Despite having had a love of art since childhood and an interest in stitch since 2009, Heléne Forsberg, who lives in Stockholm, Sweden, would often find herself gripped by indecision. She would deliberate over her choice of fabric and threads and, in particular, which techniques to use to achieve the quality of textile art she aspired to.

In fact, though she had dabbled in textile art for a decade, she didn’t feel she had the skills to fully immerse herself in her practice and produce top quality textile art.

Heléne told us how she boosted her knowledge of techniques and was able to make art that satisfied her soul, and gave her the confidence to exhibit and enjoy a community of like-minded stitchers. All of which elevated her skills and happiness to new heights. She has seen her confidence and her stitch skills soar over the last two years. Here she shares her story with us.

Heléne Forsberg: ‘I spent over a decade working in an office with papers and numbers, and being very organised. When I turned 30, I started painting as a hobby and had my first small exhibition in 2001. 

When I started stitching in 2009, I made a decision to challenge myself. I became really hooked on stitching from the start, and I can honestly say I have stitched almost every day since 2010, although I’m still making up my mind about which kind of textile art practice I would like to focus on.

Starting with TextileArtist.org

My first encounter with TextileArtist.org was at the start of 2019 when I started a one-year-long online course ‘Stitch your Story with Sue Stone’. This turned out to be the most fantastic experience!

A year later the pandemic had started and, at a time when many people were confined to their homes, TextileArtist.org offered seven free online Community Stitch Challenges on Facebook. I took part in those and loved the professionalism of the workshops and the contact with people from around the world. When they followed up with Stitch Club, I didn’t hesitate to sign up as one of their founding members.

Progressing with Stitch Club

As the pandemic continued, the members formed a happy community online. My other stitching groups in real life in Stockholm were, of course, cancelled.

The members in Stitch Club are like a modern kind of pen pal to me. But instead of writing letters to each other in the post, we have the immediacy of online communication, sharing photos of our work in the members area.

It’s such a generous and inspiring place. As it’s a global community, there’s always someone active when you’re sharing your own work or commenting on somebody else’s. I also love the sharing of things like culture and nature motifs with my global stitching friends. My English has improved greatly these past couple of years too.

Friendships and connection

For me, there are two great benefits to being a member of Stitch Club. I love the pen pal feeling – that camaraderie between the members. Right from the start, I decided that I wanted to contribute towards creating and maintaining this positive environment. In real life I like to inspire people to be creative, to enjoy life and find their true passion which, for many of us, is creating something of our own, working with our hands.

I find it extraordinarily special to have connected with others around the globe through our love of stitch, even though we live so far apart. I now have stitching friends in Australia, USA and all over Europe.

I first met Irene Curren from Scotland in April 2021 via Zoom. We are both founding members of Stitch Club and also meet in an online sub-group fortnightly with five others. We’d love to meet up in person and we’re all based in Europe so it might actually work!

We always discuss the current or previous workshop. But as we’ve got to know each other we talk about all kinds of things. We have become online friends.

Photobook record

We’ve shown each other our sketchbooks and Irene’s are fantastic. Made for Ali Ferguson´s workshop, they’re now filled with notes and examples of many Stitch Club workshops. Once, she held up a printed photo book of her textile art and I was inspired to develop one as a record of my Stitch Club pieces. I’ve made one for each workshop interpretation I did in 2020 and 2021, and plan to make one for 2022 at the end of the year. I’ve listed all the workshops by their name and the name of the workshop leader. The online versions can be viewed via my website. 

I feel really happy about having documented my work this way. I’ve received lots of lovely compliments and it also helps me to take a step back and view all my pieces from a new perspective: I always learn more about myself and my textile journey whilst putting them together and then looking through them. 

In real life they are sitting in my studio, some mounted and some still waiting. It would be nice to show them in an exhibition someday – perhaps together with other Club members? That would be so much fun!

Gaining self belief

One of the greatest transformations I’ve made is in my new-found ability to make quick decisions. Prior to Stitch Club, I was incredibly slow – very ambivalent – and I would agonise over this and that. I’d take so long to decide what to stitch or which one of the 100 ideas popping out of my head to follow through with.

Now, I nearly always go with the very first idea that pops into my head after seeing the new workshop video. That’s also helped me to refine my sketching habits. 

Naturally, I’ve improved my stitching a great deal since starting Stitch Club too. It’s no wonder, with all the practice I get.

Becoming structured, consistent and no longer agonising over all the decisions (I literally spent hours deliberating before) has turned me into a person who believes in myself.

Let’s face it, there just isn’t the time to execute all the ideas in my head. So now I just go with the first one. It’s so much easier, and I can always adjust that idea while in the process of making the piece.

Gaining new skills from experts is phenomenal. I’ve learned so many new interesting techniques that, combined with the skills and knowledge I already had, I’ve now got the ability to work on my projects much more creatively. The experts inspire me and enable me to believe it’s possible to make such marvellous pieces of art. It’s definitely taken me to heights I hadn’t dreamed of before.

The scope of the Stitch Club workshop leaders´ practices is huge. They all show that the possibilities for creativity are endless. Being creative is fun and we should all have a try at it!

Once you have learned the language of stitch it’s easier to speak and express what you truly feel or want.

Making and taking time

I’m also driven by my passion, enjoyment, curiosity and determination to learn and improve.

The motivation I get from interacting with the other members, seeing how they interpret the workshops and getting feedback and support for my own interpretations is truly inspiring.

The online community is so encouraging that I don’t find it at all difficult to make the time to do the workshops.

I have a routine that’s very clear to me and my family. Every Friday night, after having our traditional pizza, I watch the new video before going to bed. Then I sleep on it. In the morning I choose my material and generally go with the very first idea. If there is time I start stitching Saturday morning. If not, I do it at the beginning of the following week. 

I go with the flow, and I feel no pressure. If it has to be a really small piece, so it is. That’s my way of giving myself a fun treat. I give myself the permission to spend a few hours on my number one hobby and it helps me with my daily routines.

Motivation to make – the why?

Mostly, what drives me is curiosity! I want to realise my ideas and make them work. I find it very satisfying to develop my own adaptation and altering of techniques and materials. I also like to surprise myself when I create and not be too repetitive with predictable outcomes. 

Making is an adventure to me. I love to experiment and constantly develop my knowledge and skill through practice. Cross-referencing techniques, choosing the colour combinations for my new projects and exploring the possibilities of various materials – I love all of that. 

I can be a neat stitcher and be super detailed, organised, thorough and patient. Or I can go in quickly, boldly and make crazy-looking things. Then I’ll finish by balancing the piece up at the end, adding that final stitch or piece of colour. 

The reward is my satisfaction when I look at my new piece and think: ‘I made it, I could make it work!’ It’s like creating my own mini universe, making something that didn’t previously exist completely from scratch out of my materials, through my eyes and hands and my newly gained knowledge.

I love to create and see unique things emerge through my hands, not following ready made patterns. It’s a freedom I value immensely.

Creativity and flow

I have never had any troubles with my creativity. More trouble with discipline, motivation and energy. For 10 years I had experienced an increasing state of fatigue, which was finally diagnosed as hypothyroidism and low iron levels. I started on medication in 2019, so when Stitch Club started I had regained some of my energy, though I was still lacking a bit of that daily motivation.

The workshops have helped me to keep up the tempo, which I love because I’m back to my former level of motivation. Doing all the workshops and chatting with my Stitch Club friends has become a very comfortable habit, and it’s easy to do from home.

The variety and abundance of all the workshops has helped me to be able to say ‘you are ok’. I am not alone in being a creative and eccentric person! 

I think I’d previously felt different and somewhat alone in spending time on creating textile art, not even being too bothered about selling any of it. Now I’m in a group of dedicated stitchers, and for that I’m truly grateful.

A new favourite technique

One textile technique I just LOVE and didn’t do much of before Stitch Club, is textile collage. I see myself making lots of those in the future! I am currently gathering and sorting my material for that, having fun combining various colours, fabric and threads just the way I like them.

As my local groups start up again in the autumn of 2022 I am looking forward to telling them about the huge leaps in my textile practice since 2020 and to show them my 2020 and 2021 Stitch Club photobooks.

And, last but not least, simply the fact that I’m being interviewed for TextileArtist.org about my experiences makes me feel honoured and happy. Who would have expected that two years ago? I appreciate this opportunity and hope people will be inspired and motivated to follow their passion like I have.

Embracing your curiosity, stepping forward

Whether you’re looking for success in your art or in your work, is there a common ingredient – perhaps one that Heléne has described – that can take you there? Many have studied the nature versus nurture question and the conclusion is – it’s commitment that works. 

In his book Outliers: The Story of Success Malcolm Gladwell concludes that practice isn’t the thing you do once you’re good: it’s the thing that makes you good. He gives as an example the years of long nights played in German clubs by the Beatles before their big break came along.

This article tells the story of Giorgio Armani, who abandoned his medical studies to pursue a fashion career, starting at the bottom as a window dresser. As he took opportunities to learn new skills and practise them, he developed what appeared to be a natural ability – another word for talent.

For some practical advice, creatives can take inspiration from Elizabeth Gilbert, the writer who started by taking jobs in diners by day while writing by night, to reach international acclaim as an author with her book Eat Pray Love. Her book Big Magic encourages us to embrace our curiosity and move forward. It describes how to tackle what we most love, and how to confront what we most fear.

Key takeaways

Heléne is driven by curiosity and has described her passion, enjoyment and determination to learn and improve. But it’s not all been plain sailing: she’s had some health problems and indecision – issues many of us share. Here’s a summary of what you can do to overcome those challenges.

• Heléne overcame her hurdles by learning to trust in her first idea and take that forward. At times she chose to make small pieces of work to ensure progress in the time she had available. This is how she built her confidence and skills and moved forward with her range of techniques.

• Enthusiasm is a word that Heléne epitomises. Because she loves to stitch, distractions like social media have to take a back seat. What is taking up your time – that could be redirected to your stitching practice?

• Find like-minded people. They can motivate, inspire and generally give you some fun. Whether in person or online, find your tribe. Heléne has made stitching friends online, and connections that she treasures.

• Online is easy. When Heléne found Stitch Club, it was a no-brainer – she knew it was going to work for her. She can now happily be creative and communicate from home with no guilt and no worry.

Artist biography

Heléne Forsberg lives in Stockholm, Sweden and has been a member of Skapande Broderi Stockholm (Creative Embroidery Stockholm) since 2012. She has been a painter for over 20 years and has worked with stitch since 2009. Heléne is a founding member of TextileArtist.org’s Stitch Club.

Website: www.heleneforsberg.se

Instagram: @forsberg_helene

Read more in this article about whether creative people are born or made, or here about how to break through your creative blocks.

‘Inspiration’ is what leads us to create with passion. We want to share the thrill of a brilliant sunset, the innocent smile of a young child or that lovely fading rose. When we’re inspired, we can imagine the perfect colours, fabrics and stitches we’ll use, and then dive right into the making process.

But unfortunately, there are times when inspiration eludes us. We stare at a blank piece of linen just as the writer stares at a blank sheet of paper wondering where to begin? What story am I trying to tell? Where’s the excitement? It’s artistically painful when nothing stirs our soul to eagerly pick up a needle and thread.

Be assured, textile artists of all abilities face these vacant moments, including UK artist Sue Stone. However, Sue relies upon her art school education, where she was taught to truly look at her surroundings for inspiration. We’re not talking about cursory glances or simply noticing the obvious. Sue looks up, down, around and in every other direction possible to discover what’s often overlooked. She purposely seeks the details, textures and patterns that surround her, and then combines that information to create her inventive settings.

Sue also documents what she sees by always having a camera to hand when she’s out and about. Over the years, Sue has literally snapped hundreds of images for both current and future inspiration. Nothing is off limits, from peeling paint to sidewalk cracks to crumbling cobblestones. Graffiti and street signs also inspire with their graphic elements and colours.

Sue’s family photo albums are another key source of artistic inspiration. Beloved ancestors call out to her, but she also enjoys sending an album’s unknown women and men on incredible journeys. She combines fact and fiction to create connections between the past and present in remarkable ways.

Sue will tell you her work may not always be about what you think you see. And this peek into her key sources of inspiration will show you how and why that’s indeed the case.

A peek inside the family album

Sue Stone: People are an ever-fascinating subject for me, and I’m a storyteller at heart when it comes to my textile art. Every piece I make bears a tale, whether it’s my mum’s life story in Portrait of a Grimsby Girl or my own self-portraits. Even my New York travelogues were inspired by the backstory of a family gathering.

Overall, my work is more illustrative than realistic, and I strive to capture my subjects’ characters and personalities versus their exact likeness. My characters also usually confront the audience face on, looking out and inviting a conversation between viewer and maker.

My number one source for inspiration is the family album. Every time I study its pages, I’m reminded of the passing of time and the transience of life. My mum, dad, grandparents, sister, husband and children have all been featured in my work.

Working with the family album is also a way for me to remember who I am and where I came from. To that end, many of my works juxtapose disparate images from the past with those from the present to make a connection among people, place and time. By presenting two specific points in time, I create the illusion of time travel that asks the viewer to imagine what happened in between.

Inspiration for a new work can come from any aspect of an old photograph, including the composition of the snap itself or the character of its subject within. But I’m especially intrigued by photos featuring unknown characters. I think everyone’s family album houses photos of people whom no one seems to know.

The photographs I like best are the small, faded sepia or black-and-white photos that offer very little information. Those snaps give me an opportunity to use my imagination to craft partial narratives that allow viewers to draw their own conclusions.

Anonymous photos are also a great device to portray the past and key historical events. For example, Another Time, Another Place is a surreal and ambiguous composition about inequality during times when women had no right to vote.

Journeys: real and imagined

Journeys and places also inspire my work. Fact and fiction are interwoven through many of my pieces, but they’re all about solving mental dilemmas.

My imagined journeys are often triggered by something I’ve seen or heard, and then the concept develops as a journey of thought. That part of the journey often takes a very long time. The journey eventually resolves and concludes during the actual making process, and then it’s on to working out my next mental dilemma with another journey!

The first work in which I merged reality and fiction was East End Chair (2007). I combined different images in a slightly surreal way, and it was the first piece in which I used graffiti in the background. It’s about the journey of the Grimsby fishing industry, both its demise and subsequent emergence as a modern-era docks operation. My process and subject matter have since evolved, but that particular work opened my mind to the possibilities.

My imagined journeys all have real elements in the background, whether it’s a local Grimsby street scene as in Are We Nearly There Yet?, a background of pictorial tiles from Seville as in Another Place, Another Time, or a combination of images from Copenhagen and Denmark as in A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour – Copenhagen.

The fictional element lies in how I transport people who lived in a different era to those real places. As with my family album, often the people are unknown to me, and I am just asking ‘what if?’.

I also think about our different lived experiences over time. For example, in the Grimsby Girl’s World Tour series, I’m thinking about the lack of opportunity my mum had compared to all the opportunities I’ve had.

And sometimes I like to imagine journeys that present a new opportunity for people I have known. I enjoy giving them a different outcome to their journey through life, such as a new career or new place to be that I think they would have enjoyed.

Ironically, I am a reluctant traveller in real life. I really don’t enjoy any kind of travel, be it car, train or plane. But I love being in different places and experiencing new sights and sounds, so I have taught myself to ‘just get through’ the journey. It’s a means to an end.

I constantly ask myself ‘are we there yet?’ just as I did in childhood when my sister and I travelled in the back of my dad’s car filled with smoke from his pipe. That phrase now appears in my work. For example, I used the phrase behind the detail of my son, husband and me on a New York City subway in Brooklyn: Recollection, Return & Repartee. I hated going on the subway. 

Architectural elements

Another source of inspiration for me are the often overlooked, intimate details I discover when I am out and about. Rather than just enjoying the general landscape, I look up, down and all around for manmade and accidental textures and patterns. Street grates, cobblestones, tiles and other architectural elements are often featured in my work.

I’m an avid photographer, and I collect hundreds of images as an aide-memoire for my work. I’m particularly fond of walls, as there are so many types of bricks and stones that present beautiful, subtle colour palettes.

I’ve also started to feature more signs in my work. Whether a traditional street name or a sign with directional arrows, I enjoy how different signs’ graphic elements complement my work.

Graffiti love

The street art and graffiti I see on my travels provide a rich source of inspiration, and they’re the perfect complement to the street settings I create for the people who inhabit my work. I like graffiti’s ephemeral nature. It’s here today, gone tomorrow. Or perhaps painted over by another street artist.

I also love graffiti’s bright colours and how it’s created in different forms and sizes. I enjoy large murals and the occasional random sculpture. But I am obsessed with taking photos of the stickers I discover.

I feature graffiti and street art first and foremost as an homage to the original artist because of the work’s temporary nature. It’s always important to acknowledge the artist whenever possible, so if I can identify an artist, I always include the artist’s tag featured in the art and/or the name of the artist in my artist statement.

The street art in my works is a device to identify the present day, and the vintage images of people I juxtapose with that art represent the past. Both work together to allude to a journey through life, time and imagined treks to far-off places.

Key takeaways

• When you’re next out and about, look for the textures and patterns that surround you. Look up at the trees or tall buildings. Look down at the grass or sidewalk. Look all around for the details.
• Always have a camera handy and snap away. Today’s phones take great pictures, and since your photos will mostly serve as reference, they don’t have to be perfect.
• Haul out those old photo albums and think about how times have changed. How might you create a composition that merges your ancestors’ past with your current lifestyle?
• Look for old photos that feature family or friends you don’t know, and then send them on an imagined journey through time or place.

Artist biography

Sue Stone is based in the UK, and her work has been exhibited widely across the globe. Most recent exhibits include the 12^th From Lausanne to Beijing International Fibre Art Biennial Exhibition (2022) and the 62 Group’s Knitting & Stitching Show (2022). Sue also lectures and teaches worldwide, and she is a member of the 62 Group of Textile Artists and a Fellow of the Society of Designer Craftsmen.

Website: womanwithafish.com

Facebook: facebook.com/suestone.womanwithafish

Instagram: @womanwithafish

Where do you find inspiration for your textile art? Let us know in the comments below.

Since 2020, there’s been a sea change in the way that people around the world connect along with a revolution in how we learn.

When lockdowns confined us to our homes, so many of our normal sources of communication – through work, socialising, travel, hobbies and sports – were abruptly terminated and we were forced to rethink.

How did you cope during that uncertain time? The initial fear may have led to feelings of isolation, anxiety or even depression. Perhaps you felt a malaise, or a lack of inspiration?

Or perhaps you felt that there was a choice, and you asked yourself: what do I really want to do with my time? It was an opportunity to choose between the bright side or the dark side.

Textile artist and card designer Jean Rill-Alberto told us how online connections opened up a whole new world of opportunity for her. ‘When the pandemic began, I found a Stitch Meditation group on Facebook. I joined and tentatively stitched my first self portrait. The group was a wonderfully supportive community and a place to remain encouraged while keeping our hands busy doing what we love. And those connections and experiences have lasted and grown way beyond lockdown.’

Home-based hobbies

Zoom literally zoomed in popularity and the upsurge in online tutorials opened doors that had been previously closed. Were you one of those who turned to yoga in your living room, or stitching at your dining table?

For many with a love of stitch like Jean, their stash became their best friend. Sewing cupboards were tidied, stashes were well and truly busted and new projects begun – even completed!

Feeling compelled to do our part in helping the textile art community combat feelings of isolation, in March 2020 TextileArtist.org responded to lockdown with seven free online Community Stitch Challenge workshops led by some of the world’s most inspiring and experienced textile artists.

The demand was so great during those seven free weeks that our private membership, the TextileArtist.org Stitch Club, was born and has continued to offer exciting creative learning opportunities for members way beyond lockdown.

Stitching together online

Anne Brooke of Brighouse in Yorkshire, UK has been a Stitch Club member since the very beginning and has found the regular practice invaluable in developing her own work.

‘I love having the opportunity to work alongside artists I would never have the opportunity to work with in person.’

Anne explains: ‘The Stitch Club community is so valuable and seeing the work others post in the workshops inspires me to pick up a needle and stitch. I think it’s also fab that everyone is so supportive of each other, chatting online and commenting on each other’s work. Even if you don’t have time to take part in every workshop, there’s a lot to take away in just watching and being inspired by a new technique that you may use or come back to later.’

‘Myself and a group of friends meet up to stitch together. Over lockdown we watched the Stitch Club workshop videos and worked together via Zoom, and now we do this in person. The last one we did was after Anne Kelly gave a talk to our group Fabricology (formally Halifax Embroiderers’ Guild), and that week Anne ran the Stitch Club workshop too, so my friends and I got together to watch her workshop and stitch.

During the lockdowns I developed some of my own online community projects, such as #52tagshannemade. Initially they were for my own mindfulness and I videoed them to share with others. As more and more people joined in, the project was stitched all over the world. The messages I have received have been overwhelming, thanking me for keeping people busy and inspired to stitch, which is what the Stitch Club did for me.’

‘Community is a really important part of stitching that has been passed down from generation to generation and has become a huge part of my life.’

Dedication to stitch

Heléne Forsberg of Stockholm, Sweden has taken part in every single Stitch Club workshop since the very beginning, not only sharing her work on the Facebook group but also producing a photobook of her beautiful mixed media work. 

Heléne has been painting for over 20 years and has stitched virtually every day since 2010. In 2011 she became an artist and tutor and has never stopped learning, honing her skills and practising her craft.

In lockdown Heléne joined each of the seven Community Stitch Challenges: ‘When Stitch Club presented the opportunity to continue the regular workshops I didn’t hesitate to join. The other members have become like modern-day pen pals to me but, instead of writing letters to each other taking several days to arrive, we write online and share photos of our stitched pieces.’

‘It’s a fantastic way to share my love and engagement for stitching with like-minded people. Because it is a global community, there is always someone active in the members area. And I’ve improved my English so much too!’

‘I now have stitching friends in Australia, the United States and all over Europe and I connect with a few outside Stitch Club too. 

I first met Irene Curren, who is based in Scotland, in April 2021. Seven of us have formed a group which meets via Zoom every couple of weeks. We are all in Europe and would like to meet up in person one day. 

We always talk about the current or previous workshop and share ideas and our own pieces and projects we are working on. We show each other our sketchbooks – Irene has fantastic, thick sketchbooks! She inspired me to print my own Stitch Club photobook after holding her printed books up to the camera in one of our Zoom meetings! 

My photo book ‘Heléne Forsberg – Stitch Club 2020’ has been printed and can be viewed online, the 2021 version is in the making and I’ll follow that with one for 2022. It would be nice to show them in an exhibition some day – perhaps together with the work of other Stitch Club members? That would be so much fun!’

Irene adds: ‘Our group has developed into a friendly supportive group with members from Sweden, Belgium, Germany, England, Scotland and Wales. We all share our ideas and learn a lot.’

‘Heléne’s been particularly generous in explaining techniques and how she produces her work, and that’s really helpful and inspiring. Her working sketch books have given me ideas, and after chatting with her and Mieke, I’ve developed the sketchbooks I made in the Ali Ferguson Stitch Club workshop into something more interesting and artistic.’

‘To me the group has been a lifeline. I’ve enjoyed chatting with people from other countries about their traditions, skills, techniques – and having a laugh!’

Blossoming creativity

Alongside Stitch Club, TextileArtist.org has continued to offer the occasional free workshop for the wider community. 

The Community Stitch Challenge was revived in 2021 and then in 2022, we developed a free five-day workshop led by artist and author of the bestselling book Drawn to Stitch. We called it Stitch Camp.

Under Gwen’s clear and gentle guidance there was an unprecedented blossoming of creativity, connection, encouragement and gratitude in the 12,000 strong Facebook group where work was shared.

When artist Caryla Chambers of Sioux Hill, South Dakota, USA took part, she hadn’t touched her materials for a long time and she didn’t sew. 

She told us how she began from scratch, rediscovering her energy and making new friends: ‘Oh, Stitch Camp started it all for me! I decided I wanted to do something new. The idea of painting and marking on fabric appealed to me so I jumped in head first. I didn’t have any fabric, so I used an old linen blouse. I didn’t even have embroidery floss or needles. My weaver friend Joan donated needles, a pin cushion, small scissors and floss to get me started!’

From little acorns…

After Stitch Camp, Kim Saxe in the US (a founding member of Stitch Club) and Sharon Hope in Scotland formed the Stitch Camp social group on Facebook to help participants stay connected beyond the free workshop.

Kim has voluntarily organised projects like ‘work-in-progress Wednesdays’, local meet-ups for coffee, cake and project sharing and a stitched postcard swap connecting over 270 of the group’s members across the world.

Taking the first step

As lockdowns hopefully disappear into the annals of the history books, online textile art workshops continue to thrive, offering a more convenient and cost effective way to develop your practice in your own time at home with all of your tools and materials on hand. 

But perhaps even more powerful are the connections that are springing up through online groups right across the world, breaking down cultural and national barriers. We are becoming one world.

One thing’s for sure, if you can stitch, you’re never very far away from a new friend.

Take-aways for developing friendship and connection online:

Know yourself. Ask yourself what you’re interested in doing. Is it a desire you’ve been harbouring since childhood? Or a hobby you’ve not found much time for before? Something new you’d like to try?

Find your tribe. Find online training that includes a community where you can not only develop your skills, you can do it alongside supportive people who understand and share your passion.

Reach out. Chat to those people, share your experience, ask questions and advice.

Keep in touch. If you feel like making a closer connection within an online learning community, start a smaller group or offer to exchange contact information. If that feels scary, put that to the back of your mind and take a risk. Trust in the fact that people really are kind and want to join with others.

Stay tuned to TextileArtist.org. We’ll be opening up registration for Stitch Club (which we only do twice a year) very soon.

If you’ve found new friends through textile art, or if you’re already a member of Stitch Club, we’d love to hear about your experiences in the comments below. How have you found friendship and connection with likeminded people, and how has it affected your own creative practice? 

It’s time.

Time to explore your creativity.

Time to expand your toolkit of textile techniques.

Time to embrace a fulfilling stitch practice.

You know it’s time because you find yourself gazing awestruck at someone else’s experiments with fabric, thread and mixed media.

You know it’s time, because you still feel the warmth of your own grandmother’s pleasure over a wonky-stitched felt peg bag you made her when you were nine, or because you find yourself getting just a little too excited over a scrap of dove grey linen.

So, what’s stopping you from threading that needle and starting your own creative adventure?

Identify your creative barriers

Maybe the reason your creative process has been a bit random and inconsistent throughout the years is because of Life Happens Syndrome, making time a scarce resource? Earning money to pay the bills, chasing round after children or grandchildren and the whole caboodle of life squeezes every last hour from your diary, and there’s nothing left for yourself.

Sometimes there are just too many ideas whizzing about in your head, and choosing one to work on brings on a bout of creative paralysis.

“So this is my dilemma. So many ideas! Will I do a rough edge or turned-under appliqué? Will I paint the background fabric first? Will I print photos on fabric to incorporate in the piece? Will I finish the piece with hand stitching or machine stitching?”

Perhaps your inner critic shouts more loudly than your inner coach, telling you that you’re not creative, or that if you can’t do it perfectly then you shouldn’t do it at all.

Perhaps you can’t always count on your energy. Sometimes your health can let you down, leaving you depleted and disappointed that you can’t always turn up for yourself.

“Apart from standard aches and pains I am getting debilitating pain with my sewing hand. This has become particularly bad these last six months and it’s the main reason why it’s so hard to keep up regular practice.”

Sometimes you’ve the will to create but, without inspiration, it feels like you’ve started the car but there’s nowhere to go.

Maybe there’s absolutely nothing stopping you. That can be its own barrier! You have time, resources, energy and the will to create. But with no boundaries or deadlines, absolute freedom can be overwhelming. Where do you start? Where do you finish?

Taking that first step isn’t easy, and there are a truckload of reasons, feelings and fears that make that first step near impossible. But, beneath all this, your creative spirit is alive and well, and doing its best to break out. So, give it a helping hand with an attitude of kindness towards yourself, and curiosity towards discovering more about your own creativity.

Here’s how…

1 Make it manageable

Start small. Start tiny. Find pockets of time and use that time to practice a stitch or play with colours and textures that resonate with you. No-one’s expecting a masterpiece.

“When a child learns how to play the piano, we don’t expect them to compose an original symphony. They play “Mary Had A Little Lamb” over and over and over again, and then progress to harder, more challenging compositions as they go.”

Textile artist Clarissa Callesen

And it’s not a race. Slow progress is better than no progress. Work in short bursts.

Break a workshop exercise into teeny chunks and work on a chunk at a time.

“Doing workshops online that I can revisit in my own time, helps me break things into manageable chunks. So if I don’t have four hours to work on a piece, I can get something done in 30 minutes, and then tomorrow, I can spend 30 more minutes. And eventually, I’m going to have something to show for it.

Before I thought I had to have big chunks of time that I put into art and production. Now I understand that’s not the case and I am working far more regularly because of it.”

Laura Otten, Stitch Club member

Start by making samples rather than aiming for a whole piece of textile art. Sampling is a focused and effective way of developing your unique creative voice without investing time and love into one huge piece, only to be discouraged if you don’t like the result (ahem, see Focus on the process below).

“Samples give me the confidence to tackle larger or more intricate pieces because I can try out a concept or thought beforehand and see how and where I could develop it.”

Textile artist Monica Bennett

2 Focus on the process

When you turn up to your creative projects without expectation of a good result, you free yourself to play rather than be perfect.

When you focus your attention on the process of making art, rather than on the piece of art itself, a strange thing happens. Your curiosity comes to the fore, and the spirit of experimentation envelops you. You’ll ask yourself questions, big and small, such as:

“What would happen if I used linen instead of wool?”

“How would a smaller backstitch change this eye shape?”

“How can I express my anger about the care system with stuff from my stash?”

“How can I honour my heritage using this old photo of great aunt Flo?”

Asking those questions gives you a way into your process. And within the possible answers to those questions lies creativity.

3 Play with limitations

It can be hard to begin if you’ve got too much choice: perhaps your head is spinning with ideas, or your cupboards are overflowing with beautiful fabric and every colour of thread.

And it can be just as difficult if you’ve no ideas at all, or all your stash cupboard contains is some well-fed, happy moths.

This is where playing with limitations comes into its own. When you limit yourself, when you create boundaries for yourself, you’re reducing the need for decisions and giving yourself more room to be creative. Paradoxically, limitations give you freedom.

In an online workshop, textile artist Sue Stone inspired members of Stitch Club to use just three fabrics, three threads and three colours to create strip woven textile art. Setting these parameters upfront empowered members’ creative processes, helped them avoid decision fatigue and overwhelm, and led to some stunning results.

4 Have fun with failure

“Detours are always more interesting than the main road.”

Conceptual artist Mary Kelly

Giving yourself permission to fail is one of the most empowering things you can do for your creativity. Perfectionism has no place in your practice. Mistakes are an adventure and an opportunity for creative growth.

When something goes horribly, hysterically “wrong”, your inner critic might pop out and tell you, “the dog could make a better job of that.’ Simply thank her for her opinion and move on. Keep stitching. Her voice will quieten down as you fail bigger, fail better and enjoy a voyage of discovery through your mistakes.

“I wasn’t happy with the look that my pale threads were giving my piece. So I started cutting the stitches to remove them, and things started fraying. But, actually, this looked really appealing, so I embraced my mistake, and kept the cut threads.”

Wendy Kirwood, Stitch Club member

You’ll learn just as much (if not more) from your failures as your successes. “Failure” is just feedback. It’s a positive part of your learning process and gives you a chance to reflect on what works, what doesn’t work and what you’d do differently next time.

And if disappointment does creep in when something turns out mad, bad or downright ugly, remember that disappointment is part of the artistic journey. Dance it out, stitch it out and keep creating. Embrace imperfection. Your imperfections are what makes you unique.

“Perfection is subjective. I prefer discovery. What you may think of as your imperfections as a stitcher help you to interpret what you see in a way that nobody else could.”

Gregory T Wilkins, Stitch Club tutor.

5 Add a little structure

When it’s hard to get started, a structured plan can help. 

When you know what to do next, you spend less time thinking and more time stitching. 

Structure gives you a clear starting point, a clear next point and so on, and, in between sessions, you may find that your subconscious incubates creative ideas that spring on you ready for the next session.

Create a self-directed plan or work through an online workshop, where the structure is already laid out for you. Whichever you choose, following a structure is a powerful way to practice techniques and explore your creativity. 

6 Don’t seek to be original straight away

An effective way back into stitching is to choose a work or an artist you admire, and follow along with what they do. What is it about their work that you love?

“Being influenced by other people’s work is quite normal and it’s all part of the process of discovering more about yourself. You will eventually pull away from that and start introducing things into your work that are unique to you.”

Textile artist Sabine Kaner

When you’re inspired a piece of textile art, it’s not copying – it’s learning. After all, when you start learning piano, you don’t start with composing your own suite of preludes.

“Originality is a concept that we’ve put up on a pedestal as the ultimate. But I think that when we concentrate too much on originality it stops us following our own curiosity. Copying is normal. When you combine inspirations and techniques from different artists, you create the thing that is yours.”

Textile artist Clarissa Callesen

How being a textile technique butterfly can enhance your practice

A key benefit of our early childhood education was the opportunity to try new and different things. Especially with non-curricular activities. Music programs encouraged us to try out various instruments and vocal singing styles. Sports programs offered a variety of competitive experiences indoors and out. Arts programs presented both visual and performing opportunities.

There was a good reason behind all those options: all that ‘dabbling’ helped us discover our passions and strengths. Emphasis was placed on trying out and exploring new things, and little pressure was placed on ‘choosing’ or ‘perfecting’ a particular activity. That’s what made it fun!

Unfortunately, as adults starting out on our creative journey (or coming back to it after years of not picking up a needle and thread), we tend to forget the joy and benefits of dabbling. Instead, we pressure ourselves to commit to a particular endeavor. Like a soon-to-be graduate, we bombard ourselves with questions like ‘what style of textile art do I want to create?’ or ‘which techniques or materials best suit me?’

It’s okay not to know the answers. And it’s more than okay to dabble! That’s how you’ll find out.

Why not return to that childhood approach of exploration and play for a while? Regardless of whether you’re stitching for fun or on a more dedicated pursuit to find your creative voice, dabbling can get you there.

You won’t be wasting time or energy. Dabbling is an investment in your creative future. Each workshop you do or technique you try helps lay the path for more in-depth work later on. And you don’t have to finish every piece you start.

Think back to the first box of crayons or set of paints you had as a child. It’s unlikely you stared at those colourful objects, refusing to touch them, wondering if you could create a masterpiece. More probably you eagerly grabbed a crayon or splashed your brush deep into the water jar and started spreading colours across the paper.

You also likely had plenty of unfinished work lying about as you moved from one creative adventure to the next. Perhaps you remembered that new Lego set needed your attention or your mum invited you to learn to bake cookies. No matter. Whether you returned to your painting or left it to beautifully languish, you learned something.

That’s the same creative approach we encourage you to take at the start of your textile art journey. Even as an adult, dabbling can help unlock your future artistic voice.

The joy of bits and bobs

Years back, business guru Malcom Gladwell popularised the notion that it took at least 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert in a given field. It’s a catchy notion. But to make such a commitment, you must first choose a particular technique or material that suits your creative interest. Not easy!

And even if 10,000 hours of practice leads to mastering a technique, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee you’ll enjoy that technique. What a shame to spend all that creative time on a skill that didn’t inspire!

This is why dabbling better serves your creative journey. Ironically, not committing to a particular technique can ultimately inform any in-depth creative choices you make in the future. Why? Because you’ll discover which techniques truly inspire.

When Helen Cooper started participating in Stitch Club workshops, she found herself feeling self-imposed pressure to become an expert in her textile art journey. She had retired from academia where her work had been filled with overseeing students and research.

“It was all a rush in academia, and I transferred that onto my textile practice. But with the help of the Stitch Club workshop leaders, I’ve come to realise I was too focused on the outcome. The process is far more important. That was a huge door opening for me. Stop your rushing!”

Helen Cooper

As Helen suggests, it’s not about ‘practice’ when you’re dabbling.

Instead, it’s about experimenting. You’re simply attempting a new creative approach to see what happens.

Push yourself to try something new

We tend to be creatures of habit, even with our art ventures. We tell ourselves what we’re ‘good at’ (which is often what feels most comfortable) and ignore the rest.

That’s a self-defeating approach to creativity, as it prevents you from truly experimenting. Doing the same thing that leads to the same outcome doesn’t help you grow as an artist.

Indeed, it does take gumption to try something totally new, but we promise the take-away in doing so is well worth it.

Stitch Club member Jane Cook faced this dilemma when one of the weekly workshops focused on stitching figures and people.

“I knew that was not my thing and thought I am definitely not going to do that workshop. But when I saw what everyone else was doing, I got inspired and gave it a go. I could not have been more delighted and surprised with the pieces I created.”

Jane Cook

Remind yourself no one is looking, keep an open mind, and take the plunge into creative adventures.

Ask yourself ‘what if?’

Some experimentation requires you to jump ship from your preferred techniques, materials or tools. In fact, those favorites can also serve as foundations for your exploration.

Textile artist Jodi Colella always encourages her students to ask ‘what if…?’ to help push their experimentation forward. And she poses that question to herself to make sure her own work continues to evolve.

“If you love red, then experiment with 100 kinds of red. Or if you love silk, experiment with different kinds of threads on silk.”

Jodi Colella

Jodi especially likes to have students create 10 small studies that are easy to complete, each responding to a unique ‘what if?’ question. What if I use yarn for this version? What if I paint the background red in this version? What if I tear the fabric for this version?

“The first four or five samples will definitely feature deviations because you’re pushing hard. But they’ll also still be somewhat close to the original. It’s when you move into the sixth or more samples that those “what if” questions really start to push your creativity.”

Jodi Colella

It’s okay not to like something

Not every technique or material will suit your fancy, and that’s okay!

Unlike your mother saying you must eat everything on your plate, we encourage you to take what looks appetising and leave the rest. But we do encourage you to at least take a taste of everything.

There’s as much learning in not liking something as there is in activities we enjoy. It’s helpful to know strip weaving is not your thing or French Knots are just too frustrating. And it’s not because you weren’t successful. It’s because you just don’t enjoy those techniques.

Not liking something isn’t the same as doing something wrong.

Happy mistakes

Perhaps the biggest challenge to trying new things is fear of failure. You look at an instructor’s work or a finished project and think you could never achieve the same outcome.

Again, you need to remind yourself that you’re simply dabbling, and mistakes are okay. And those mistakes can actually push you in new directions. There’s no such thing as wasted effort when you’re experimenting, and it’s critical to artistic growth.

If everything you attempt turns out exactly as you hope, it’s likely you’re following a formula for success that’s ‘safe.’ That may initially feel good, but that doesn’t mean you’re growing or evolving in your creative journey.

Mistakes are truly opportunities for learning. And with a mindset of play, they can serve as a true adventure.

Don’t be afraid to copy at first

‘Originality’ can be another concern we face on our creative journeys. We are hugely inspired by a variety of artists, yet we worry we’ll be seen as copycats or imposters if we attempt to mimic their styles.

Textile artist Clarissa Callesen wants you to know copying when dabbling is not only okay, it’s the way we learn in any artistic endeavor.

‘When a child learns to play piano, she’s not expected to start with composing. Instead, she plays “Mary Had A Little Lamb” over and over and over. Eventually she’ll move on to harder and more challenging pieces. But that copying plays an important role in her development.’

Clarissa agrees we don’t want to only copy. It is important to ultimately express that which is special to us. So, how to do that?

“Originality is like a collage. So, I encourage artists to combine all the inspirations they learn from copying into something that eventually becomes their own style and voice.”

Clarissa Callesen

Clarissa also wants you to remember it’s impossible to exactly copy another person’s work. We are not machines, so the fact your brain and hands made the choices and did the work prevents you from making an exact replica of another artist’s work.

Tips for dabbling

As adults, we can have a knee-jerk resistance to the notion of dabbling. ‘Focus’ and ‘productivity’ take center stage and can even feel like moral imperatives.

But it doesn’t have to be that way when it comes to your textile art journey. Here are some tips for regaining your dabbling mojo:

1 Use or re-use what you have on hand

We can sometimes worry about the expense of trying new techniques. We don’t want to waste good fabrics, tools or supplies. So, whenever possible, try to use what you have at hand.

Barbara Cotterell, one of the founding members of the Material Space Textile Group, tries hard not to buy anything new and always prefers to work with found materials, mostly from around the home.

Of course, there are no hard and fast rules. Every now and again you will need to replenish your supplies. But before you rush out and buy the exact type of fabric suggested by a workshop leader, ask yourself what you already have at home that could be used as an alternative.

Many textile art techniques use very simple approaches that are combined in inventive ways. And who knows? You may invent a new technique of your own using that old scrap of linen.

2 Set a timer

It’s easy to give up when something doesn’t work exactly as we hoped. But remember, it’s the process that counts. After you line up your materials, try to commit to spending at least 15-20 minutes playing with a new technique.

Try to set judgment aside and just see what happens. Remember, you’re creating a sample, not a full masterpiece.

3 Unfinished work is okay

Life happens and interests can wane. Don’t beat yourself up if you have to put your needle down to attend to family matters. And don’t worry if you discover a particular technique or material just doesn’t suit your fancy. Whatever time and energy you put into sampling counts as an investment in your creative journey.

Before she embraced the notion of dabbling, Stitch Club member Laura Otten told herself everything she did with textiles had to lead somewhere ‘significant.’

“Doing various workshops, I have gained skills I didn’t even know I needed or wanted. It hadn’t occurred to me to do some of these techniques, and I really enjoy them. It’s really given me back my creativity and it’s given me permission to just do what I can. I don’t have to come out with a big finished piece, just working is enough. I now see the value in experimentation and it really does inform the work I make that isn’t inspired by a particular workshop.”

Laura Otten

4 Ask yourself ‘What If?’

Think about a favourite technique, material or tool, and then ask yourself how to turn it on its head. What if you use chunky yarn or ribbon for that stitch? What if you add beading? What if you cut a finished sample apart and reassemble it differently? Create multiple small samples to explore the possibilities.

5 Combine experiments

As you learn new techniques, look for ways to combine them into new pieces of work. Maybe that blanket stitch you just learned could be combined with a collage technique. Or perhaps that new felting technique could be combined with an appliqué technique.

Long-term dabbling is an investment that really starts to pay off and helps you uncover your own visual vocabulary. Stitch Club member Gill Tyson discovered that phenomenon while watching other members post their samples that combined learning across various workshops.

“They would post, “I used a bit of this and a bit of that.” That’s when real learning is taking place, because people are pulling that knowledge and experience together. The end outcome is greater and more original, because it’s like a collage of ideas and elements. It’s very fulfilling. And it’s a huge achievement.”

Gill Tyson

The possibilities are endless!

6 Record what happens

Write down the materials, techniques and supplies you used, in case you want to use them again in the future. Always try to record what happens without being too critical of your end result. Simply focus upon what you enjoyed about the process and what you might do differently in the future.

Textile artist Cas Holmes lives by the mantra ‘reflect, create, record,’ including making note of the things that didn’t go well. Her mistakes reveal exciting new directions for her work, and she sees trying new things as part of an ongoing investigative process that informs the evolution of her work.

How we’ve missed the joy of in-person textile art workshops. The calm expertise of the tutor. The thrill of shared making. Connecting with real people in real time in the real world. There’s nothing quite like it.

It’s time to celebrate that these experiences are once again possible.

But before you delete your social media accounts and donate your iPad to charity, pause a second.

Haven’t there been more than a few positives to the world of stitch and mixed media being forced to go virtual?

A portal to creative possibilities

During the pandemic, we’ve been exposed to a whole range of new and exciting ways to engage with our creativity that don’t exist ‘in-person’.

The internet has become a direct line to the studios of textile artists on the other side of the earth. We’ve learned weird and wonderful techniques and processes we hadn’t considered, or even heard of, before. And, despite not being in the same room as the people we’ve been communicating with, we’ve been inspired by fellow stitchers we’d never get the chance to meet offline.

Maybe you’re thinking, “OK. I can see how an online textile art workshop might be a nice add-on to in-person classes.”

But what if it were the other way round?

After all, even when the world resumes regular service, there are times when in-person workshops and courses just don’t fit.

When in-person isn’t possible

Sometimes cost can be a barrier. Not everyone has a couple of hundred quid to stump up on a regular basis, or can afford travel and accommodation for a special workshop.

“I live in a remote part of the UK and I recently paid 450 pounds for an art week, plus travel and accommodation. It’s a lot of money.  Doing workshops online gives such value for money. I’m getting to choose things that wouldn’t possibly be available in such abundance.”

Judith Sutherland, Stitch Club member

Sometimes you can be constrained by what’s available in your area. If you’re passionate about building your toolkit of exciting techniques and processes and developing your visual vocabulary with textiles, the local Knit’n’Natter in the library on Thursday afternoons might not cut it.

Maybe the only artist group near you is by invitation only, and you don’t have the confidence to call yourself a textile artist (yet).

Perhaps you feel that you don’t belong anywhere.

Sometimes it’s flexibility. You just can’t make Tuesday nights, because of work or family commitments. Sometimes your health lets you down, and you can’t predict when you’ll have a bad day. What’s the point of committing to something you might not be able to attend?

“I have a ‘health hiccup’. Some days I have absolutely no energy. If that happens to be a workshop day, then it’s not easy to really take the workshop on board. But with pre-recorded workshops online, I’m not restricted to a given day. I can do it when it’s convenient for me.”

Sarah Edwards, Stitch Club member

When in-person feels uncomfortable

If you’re at the beginning of your creative journey, the thought of being in a room filled with experienced, creative stitchers can be daunting.

Maybe you’ve been to workshops where you’ve felt intimidated by your fellow students who all seemed so confident and technically accomplished. You might have been wary of asking a “stupid” question. Or maybe the loudest person in the room never stopped hoovering up the tutor’s attention.

And with so many stitchers of varying levels of experience, it’s easy to feel rushed. You might have found yourself falling further and further behind, ending the day with nothing much to show for your efforts.

Or conversely, you might have become frustrated that the workshop was plodding along too slowly to accommodate the one person who never learned to do running stitch as a child.

How online learning can become a key part of your creative practice

It’s true that in-person workshops DO offer something you can’t get online.

And the COVID-19 pandemic has certainly thrown a whole load of death-by-Zoom stuff at us: disorganised, unfocused online meetings where everyone is talking over each other, the tutor is mumbling and the demonstration is unclear and uninspiring.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here.

Well organised and properly put together online workshops have a whole host of benefits that aren’t always possible with the in-person experience.

• Expert guidance from world-renowned textile artists who take you through a creative process, but encourage you to express yourself personally, so that what you make is distinctively ‘you’ (not a copycat of their own work)
• A rich resource of on-tap video tutorials available 24/7 that you can dip in and out of at your own pace, on your own schedule, depending on your wiggly life and your own specific interests
• A range of supporting materials to enhance and clarify your experience, like step by step workbooks and inspirational ebooks
• A forum to ask your workshop leaders questions and get feedback
• A private online community of supportive people from all over the world who share your passion and understand your journey
• An atmosphere of kindness and support
• Real humans behind the scenes to guide you and help you if technical gremlins rear their ugly heads (it happens to the best of us)

Because it’s more affordable, more flexible and can fit around your other commitments, online learning can act as the backbone of your creative development and go hand-in-hand with the occasional in-person workshop.

1 Online learning is flexible so you don’t need to be

Whatever your constraints, your workshop is there for you 24/7, rather than once a week on Thursdays.

Choose a schedule that suits your time and responsibilities, whether that’s five minutes a day for stitching practice, or a week-long textile art staycation set aside for layering and embroidering a panel. Your workshop won’t disappear if you don’t use it for six months.

“Online workshops help me break things into manageable chunks. If I don’t have four hours to work on a piece, I can get something done in 30 minutes, and then tomorrow, I can spend 30 more minutes. And at the end of the week, I’m going to have something I’m proud of to show for it.”

Laura Otten, Stitch Club participant.

Online learning makes it easier for you to go at your own pace.

This is becoming even more important in a post-Covid world, where your life might be getting back to the days of ‘normal’ time pressures. With no course deadlines, you can’t fall behind, but there’s always a structure to follow, so you can never lose your way.

2 Online learning supports your style

Some of us are action learners in the extreme, learning better by stash diving and riding our creativity on a wave of playtime.

Some of us are reflectors: we like to carefully watch, reflect, and watch again before we try out something new.

Some of us like to revisit or repeat previous workshops to reinforce our learning.

Online workshops have the flexibility and content that caters for the way you learn best.

3 Online learning widens your artistic horizon

“The artists come from many places, many different backgrounds, many different parts of the world, and that expands my vision immensely. I’m doing things I never would have done and meeting artists I never would have met and my practice is evolving because of that.”

Wanda Moon, Stitch Club member

A good online workshop is your portal to learning from a global community of expert tutors.

Online workshops aren’t limited by geography, and this means that you can learn skills and techniques from artists from anywhere. It’s your window on the world of textile art, giving you different perspectives and enhancing your vision for your own practice.

4 Online learning offers a diverse, supportive community

“It’s a safe haven, with a nurturing feeling where I can learn and grow and socialise with people from all over the world with a common passion. These are my people.”

Lee Thermaenius, Stitch Club

Enjoy the freedom to connect with people from across the world who want the same thing as you – to have a creative outlet, to stitch joyfully, to learn and develop confidence as textile artists.

It’s a real meeting of enthusiasts, and a place that makes you feel you belong. Be inspired by other people’s stories, by their differences and by your similarities. It’s your global community from the comforts of your own home. It’s a safe space to share ideas, struggles, solutions and finished pieces with supportive, creative people.

“I get more than just sitting there watching somebody teaching me to stitch. I get a whole emotional support for my hobby.”

Judith Sutherland, Stitch Club member

With online textile art workshops, you have time and space to give and receive constructive feedback and suggestions. But only if you want to. That’s the beauty of online. You can lurk in the background, enjoying the learning and gaining confidence and skills from a structured learning journey. You can show your work (or not). You can ask questions (or not).

Stitching a new normal for textile art

So perhaps the way you develop your creative practice going forward looks a bit different to the pre-pandemic normal? Maybe it’s not a case of either/or? Perhaps in-person and online can go hand-in-hand to help you build a more meaningful and rounded approach to making textile art?

Why not tell us about your positive online experiences with textile art workshops in the comments below?

And how community can be a catalyst to your creativity

“I want to spend time being creative. It’s an important part of my life. But it’s very easy to say and not so easy to do.”

Jess Richardson – Member of Stitch Club and Gathering Threads

Like a baby bird madly flapping its wings and barely leaving the ground, at the beginning of your creative journey you’re likely to stumble and fall. You have the will, but lack the basic tools to express yourself confidently with fabric and thread.

But slowly, as you begin to connect (or reconnect) with your imagination and ingenuity, the more joyful the process becomes and eventually you take flight.

As you uncover your own personal way of making textile art through regular practice, the higher you soar!

But what if you’re flying solo?

When even the people you’re closest to don’t understand that creativity is an integral part of who you are, momentum can be tough to sustain.

Your wings may feel slightly heavier after a well-meaning but dismissive remark from a partner or family member about ‘tinkering with textiles’. Comments about ‘wasting time and money’ on a ‘little hobby’ can see you nose diving. Add to that the distant memory of a harsh critique from an embroidery teacher (“Wonky, uneven stitches!”) and you’re coming in for an emergency landing!

Finding the people who do understand can be transformative for your creativity, your self esteem and your life.

Take it from Jess, Yvonne, Marie, Joan, Sarah, Becca, Sharon, Erica, Vicki, Karen and Linda, collectively known as Gathering Threads.

Covid, Christmas & creativity

It was the 19th of December 2020. Coronavirus cases were out of control here in the UK, new unknowable variants were emerging and Christmas had effectively been cancelled.
But amongst all of that dark came a ray of hope and positivity: an email from a TextileArtist.org Stitch Club member called Jess Richardson.

Here’s what she had to say.

Hi Joe, Sam and everyone at TextileArtist.org Central,

As we approach the end of the year on a day full of more grim news we just wanted to let you know how much we have loved being part of Stitch Club this year.

We are a group of ladies from four different countries. Most of us didn’t know each other before joining and probably never would have met but we’ve gravitated together.

We started meeting online at the same time each week to discuss our progress with the Stitch Club workshops, offer advice and encouragement and share our love of textile practice.

We’re also in regular contact via our WhatsApp group where we chat about fab things, sad things and other news from our lives. We have swapped bits from our textile stash and been generous with our friendship.

In the run up to Christmas we organised a Tree Decoration and Card Swap and made something for one of the others in our group. Today we held an online meeting to open up these parcels. Attached is a screenshot of this happy occasion.

Without doubt these new friends and Stitch Club have become one of the most important things in our lives. Thank you very much for all the effort you put into making it a great experience for us all.

Merry Christmas

From Jess, Yvonne, Marie, Joan, Sarah, Becca, Sharon, Erica, Vicki, Karen and Linda

We were so thrilled that we arranged to gatecrash one of the Gathering Threads online meet-ups.

The passion, positivity, mutual respect and warmth in that Zoom call was palpable. This is a group of ladies whose creativity has been fuelled and whose practice has been enhanced by a sense of belonging.

Let’s meet the woman who started it all… Sharon Eynon.

All the gear, no idea!

As a child Sharon was always more comfortable resetting spark plugs with her dad than threading a needle with her mum. So when she inherited her mum’s extensive textile stash in 2014 she had absolutely no idea what to do with it.

It wasn’t until four years later, when Sharon started exploring the creative possibilities of fabric and thread in an online course with Sue Stone, that she began to understand her late mum’s love of embroidery. Finally, a way to put all her beautiful “bits and pieces” to good use!

As a founding member of Stitch Club, Sharon’s enthusiasm for making textile art continued to grow.

After feeling particularly inspired by a workshop from artist and bestselling textile author Mandy Pattullo, Sharon found herself eager to share ideas and investigate the possibilities of the process more deeply.

Sharon posted in the members area asking if any of her fellow stitchers were interested in getting together online.

Yvonne Schlaepfer-Parle was the first to answer the call…

Party of two

Yvonne is a long-time knitter and woman of the world; born in Ireland, she’s lived in London, New York, Australia and now Switzerland.

Back in March 2020, her burgeoning knitting business was about to host its first in-person retreat…and then Covid happened!

“So that whole thing crashed and burned. But then a friend of mine, who knew I was feeling pretty sad got in touch to say she’d seen the TextileArtist.org Community Stitch Challenge on Facebook and encouraged me to give it a go.”

But stitching had been ruined for Yvonne years ago when she’d been berated at school for sewing outside the lines.

“I didn’t think I’d ever be interested again. But when I watched that first free workshop with Sue Stone and she said ‘Embrace the wonky’, it changed my life! I’m not being pithy or trite—it really did. It gave me permission to go outside those lines and sometimes even plan to go outside those lines.”

Cut forward a few months. Having joined Stitch Club off the back of the free workshops in the TextileArtist.org Community Stitch Challenge, here are Sharon (in Wales) and Yvonne (in Switzerland) meeting on Zoom each week to nurture their newfound passion. A passion for something they’d both long since decided was not for them!

Week on week, stitchers from different backgrounds and at various stages of their creative journey started to join Sharon and Yvonne’s regular meetups. And as the group grew, the more inspired and excited the individual members became.

Let’s explore the creative lessons you can learn from the Gathering Threads group and how you might benefit from finding your very own stitch tribe.

How finding your stitch tribe can catalyse your creativity

1. A breadth of knowledge and experience

Imagine how regular access to a rich and diverse source of knowledge and experience could propel your own textile art practice.

Some members of Gathering Threads have a very broad skill base. Like Sarah Bond, who taught Art and Design for over 40 years, has a degree in Art History and has encouraged pupils of all ages to apply art textile techniques to fashion, stage and ecclesiastical projects.

“After I retired I sort of found myself in no man’s land deciding what to do next and, having recently moved from Hampshire to Wiltshire, I felt like I was in between communities.”

Since finding Stitch Club, and in turn Gathering Threads, Sarah has generously shared her expertise with the group, offering advice, recommendations and encouragement to the less experienced stitchers, like Yvonne:

“As a rank beginner with no artistic training, I don’t have any preconceptions. It’s been revelatory to hear others in the group who do have a background in art discussing the tips and rules they’ve learned along the way.”

2. The motivation to make

“I don’t have enough time” can often be code for “this isn’t important enough to me right now.”

If, like self-confessed butterfly Joan Noble, you do find yourself ‘easily distracted by 101 different things’, the commitment to regular meetups with like minded creative people can help you develop a more disciplined practice.

“These ladies keep me on my toes. It’s helping me be more focused and encouraging me to drop other things in favour of doing the Stitch Club workshops.”

And Karen Hughes, who had been put off sewing by the words of a childhood teacher who told her, “You’re much better at theory, than you are practical”, has also benefited from the gentle nudge being part of the group has given her.

“It’s like going to a digital cafe or college and you just turn up and we all exchange ideas and stuff. It’s a great motivator.”

The group’s weekly meetups in conjunction with the fortnightly workshop in Stitch Club have also helped Jess find direction.

“I used to beat myself up if I wasn’t doing something creative, but the regularity of being presented with a well-explained and inspiring challenge, along with all the other brilliantly organised materials, means there’s no barrier to getting started.”

3. Uncovering possibilities and breaking rules

At the start of any creative adventure, the cushion that comes from step by step rules and guidelines can be a great comfort. It’s how you get started.

More experienced stitchers, like Sarah, are ready to break those rules and steer away from the guidelines.

“I love that the tutors in Stitch Club encourage us to find freedom to explore the projects in our own way and there’s no judgement or expectation to create a duplicate of any kind. I think that’s a really progressive teaching method.”

And that ethos has been embraced by other members of the group.

Like Erica Staxenius, who was introduced to embroidery by her step-grandmother at the age of seven.

“Sewing is something I’ve delved into from time to time. After school, I started to make my own clothes from my mother’s old stash. My efforts were self-taught and I had a few disasters along the way!”

But Erica has always been what she describes as a “practical sewer” and thinking creatively to make works of art in her own voice through the Stitch Club workshops has not always been easy.

“Over the years I’ve often looked at textile art and wondered how and if I could do something similar. And I think with the help of all these wonderful inspirational workshop leaders and my friends in this group, it’s starting to feel achievable. I’ve still got a way to go, but looking back on everything I’ve done in the last year of Stitch Club it’s mind blowing how far I’ve come.”

“It’s interesting to me how I’ve never been one to follow the rules of life, but with sewing and art I have. The encouragement in this group means I’m starting to feel brave enough to break a few of those rules. I’m finally starting to become less restrictive and more inventive in my sewing.”

4. Discovering your personal visual vocabulary

The digital age has given us access to an abundance of inspiration. It’s impossible to incorporate every idea you stumble upon whilst browsing social media into your textile art. But it can be tempting to try!

Not only can this lead to an overwhelming and confused process, it might mean the work you’re making doesn’t feel distinctly ‘you’.

Through the focus of group meetings and the conscious discussion of your personal process, you can begin to hone your ideas and develop your own personal style. As Gathering Threads member Becca Allen discovered.

As a child, Becca learned to draw from her dad, created collages with her mum and made toy mice to sell to her friends.

Years later, when Becca was seeking a way to bring fabric and thread into her artwork, she took a course with the in-demand workshop leader Cas Holmes (who has since taught a popular Stitch Club class using the Japanese artform Momigami to create art). A love of all things textile was born.

Becca has been particularly inspired by the members of the group developing their own unique ways of interpreting the workshops.

“It’s amazing to see how we’re all doing the same projects, following the same set of instructions, using the same equipment, but the ways in which we translate the techniques and processes are so diverse.”

5. The confidence to create and share

Have you ever felt a little self-conscious about your lack of art training? Maybe you love being creative and have always been drawn to making things, but you’ve been reluctant to show other people what you’ve made for fear it’s not good enough?

Vicki Briggs doesn’t come from an ‘arty’ background and has struggled at times with feeling inhibited, but being part of Gathering Threads has given her the confidence to dive in and give anything a go!

“I was quite shy about posting images of my work in the members area to start off with, but with the support, advice and encouragement of our little group and the wider Stitch Club community, I’ve become braver. Now I think to myself, ‘Does it really matter? It’s a learning curve!’ The whole experience has given me a real boost in self esteem.”

And Yvonne agrees…even when the responses to what she makes are mixed.

“Since joining Stitch Club, I’ve had the confidence to venture into other groups and I’ve had very different reactions to what I’m presenting. A piece I made in a Stitch Club workshop on eco-printing was compared to mouldy pepperoni pizza by someone. I would have been horrified in the past. These days, I don’t care. Experimentation and collaboration are more important to me.”

“I now call myself a textile artist. I would never have done that before. I would have felt I was pretending to be something I was not, but now I realise I am, and I’m in the company of textile artists in this wonderful group every week. It’s been transformative.”

6 Finding solutions and fulfilling ambitions

When you hit a wall in your creative process, it can be doubly frustrating when you don’t have anyone to help you figure out how to knock it down (or at least rearrange the bricks!)

Linda Langley started stitching to pass the time when she was a young radiographer on night duty but prior to joining Stitch Club hadn’t picked up embroidery for a good few years.

“I’ve re-learned an awful lot in terms of techniques and being part of this group has meant I’ve found ways of dealing with my particular challenges. I don’t have a workspace, which can be difficult and means I’m much slower than some of the other girls, but they’re helping me realise that’s not a problem. The great thing about Stitch Club is I can go at my own pace. I don’t feel any pressure to do every workshop, but I’ve been inspired by this group to try things I wouldn’t have done if I was left entirely to my own devices.”

Marie Audéon, who lives in France, has a longstanding association with textiles, having been inspired by her mother.

“As a child I would collect and organise fabrics by colour and type, cut them up and reassemble them into something new. In adulthood I continued to sew, making a large array of decorative and useful things for the home”

Marie had always felt drawn to using the techniques she learned as a child to do something more personal and expressive and since joining the group, this dream has become a reality.

“When I discovered TextileArtist.org I thought to myself, ‘This is my chance. It’s now!’ I am learning to mix materials like paint and thread to express a personal story and through the connection with this group my process has really evolved. In the past few months I’ve been using a sketchbook to develop ideas and documenting the various stages of the creative process through photography.”

7. Nurturing an open mind and daring to experiment

Have you ever watched an online stitch tutorial or considered a particular way of making art and immediately said to yourself “That’s not my type of thing”?

Developing a sense of what you want to make and how you want to make it is an important step in your journey towards developing a personal voice for your textile art. But often the techniques and processes you feel resistance to can be surprisingly rewarding when you let go of preconceptions and give them a go.

Being part of a group with eclectic tastes can help you stay open to new experiences. Embracing alternative approaches to creativity can uncover inventive ways of interpreting projects that may have initially felt prescriptive or simple.

Jess told me:

“Even with the Stitch Club workshops that I don’t think I’ll do, when everyone in this group starts talking through their ideas and pictures of work start popping up in the members area, the enthusiasm for the project becomes infectious. You don’t want to be left out. And you end up surprising yourself with how inventive you can be with something you didn’t think was your sort of thing”.

And the collaboration within the group has also encouraged its members to join the dots, workshop to workshop, taking a technique they learned from one into the next.

Yvonne has used an exercise set by Julie B Booth in her workshop, that seemed deceptively simple, to create a whole series of work.

“I’ve gone and done several more pieces and taken that whole thing in a completely new direction.”

Create, connect, thrive

When you’re feeling creatively isolated, where do you turn for support? The most obvious place isn’t always the best fit.

Perhaps the local embroidery group has a focus on traditional needlework that doesn’t appeal…they meet on a Wednesday morning when you’re working or have childcare duties…the in-person workshops they organise run into hundreds of pounds that you can’t afford…or they just don’t get you!

The good news is you’re no longer restricted by location. You can share your creative journey with like minded creative people living on the other side of the world if that’s what it takes.

And when you find the people who understand and care, the people who push you to be more inventive and experimental, the people who make you feel safe and brave, not only will your creativity blossom, you may make meaningful and long lasting connections.

The Gathering Threads group meets on Zoom every week to work through ideas, talk about creative challenges and share their thoughts on the latest Stitch Club workshop. They share online resources and support one another via the Stitch Club members area and WhatsApp. They swap tools and materials via snail mail (when Sharon couldn’t find leaves for eco-printing, Sarah sent her some of her stash.)

But something deeper and more significant has emerged…friendship.

“We are connected by our love of art. That includes textile art but a range of other arts as well including pottery, painting, photography, quilting, knitting, crochet and felting. We also share cooking recipes and book recommendations and send birthday cards. This has developed from a group of strangers into a special group of friends.”

Yvonne Schlaepfer-Parle, Stitch Club and Gathering Threads member

And some of these friends have now met in real life too. “It’s so strange”, Jess said to Erica recently, “I feel like I’ve always known you even though it’s been less than a year.” The group are now dreaming of a time, hopefully in the not too distant future, when they can all meet up for a weekend and do one of the Stitch Club workshops together in person.

If you’re part of a textile art group, why not tell us about your experience in the comments below. How did you find your stitch tribe and what impact has it had on your creative practice? What advice do you have for anyone struggling to connect with likeminded creative people?