Sunday 29 December 2013

Embroidered Flower on Tumbling Blocks Quilt Fragment

Bought a new quilt to cut up before Christmas and down time in front of period drama over the last few days has allowed me to try out a new range of work, embroidering folk art style  flowers on to the surface. I feel a whole folk art flower phase coming on as I received a wonderful  ( and very expensive) book for Christmas called "Patterns and designs from Muhu Island" which I think is going to influence me for a while.


Saturday 28 December 2013

Louise Bourgeois in Edinburgh

I have been to Edinburgh today especially to see two Louise Bourgeois exhibitions. She is one of my absolutely favourite artists and I have always loved the way she has used fabric in many of her sculptures throughout her life. Sometimes it is clothes she or other family members have worn, old sheets and towels and sometimes tapestry elements which relate back to her parents tapestry mending business in the north of France. Today one of the most moving pieces in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art was a sculpture which used many of the berets which she wore every day. It was also good to see "Ode a La Bievre" again. Saw this a few years ago in London and a postcard of this cloth book has always been on my noticeboard.
In the Fruit Market Gallery I was mesmerised by the insomniac drawings and writings made at the end of her life.
If you don't know her work then google images Louise Bourgeois Fabric Works and hopefully you too will be blown away by the emotional charge in her work.



Monday 23 December 2013

Happy Christmas


Happy Christmas everyone.
( A design by my daughter http://alice-pattullo.blogspot.co.uk )

Tuesday 17 December 2013

Monday 9 December 2013

Etsy

I have just restocked my etsy shop with some bits and pieces from my studio including this collage which has bits of my late grandmother's sofa included and some very old silk hexagon patchwork. I love working in this very free patchwork style just pulling very special bits and pieces together into a resolved composition.




Sunday 8 December 2013

Fox and Flowers


This is one of the pieces I am showing in the Textile Hub exhibition. The fox is built up with tiny hand stitches/ split stitch. It takes me so long and I am wondering whether to go back to machine embroidery to do work like this where people can't seem to tell the difference.

Monday 2 December 2013

Textile Hub Winter Exhibition

You are warmly invited to join us on Thursday night for the preview of our winter exhibition. I will be showing all of the really big pieces that were exhibited earlier this year at Birmingham.