Satellites by Dan Coopey at Corvi-Mora
Dan Coopey is a British artist living and working in Minas Gerais, Brazil. To be honest I’d not heard of him until a friend sent me a link to one of his Instagram posts about this exhibition. The Corvi-Mora is fairly local to me but again, I’d never visited. So a double first! Coopey studied […]
Kitchen extension basketry
I’ve been a bit preoccupied recently because we are building a kitchen extension. Not building it ourselves, of course, but having teams of workmen knocking down walls, inserting steel beams, and building new walls. That’s as far as they’ve got in four weeks, which is pretty good going – partly because it hasn’t rained and […]
Weaving by the Sea and Salt Basketry Fair 2024
After teaching at a couple of back-to-back residential weekend workshops, it was a relief to get away to become a student again, without teaching responsibilities. Even better, the workshop was part of Weaving by the Sea, a very popular series of workshops in Catalonia, just south of Barcelona. This was the third time I had […]
Cable twining, or crossed warps
My autumn knitting project is going well. So well, in fact, that I might actually finish this sweater in time to wear it this winter. 🙂 The pattern is called Rilaé (available here if you are interested) and has a central block of cable stitch on the front and back. For non-knitters, the cable pattern […]
Unfinished objects
Unfinished objects are a way of life for all makers (or maybe it’s just the makers I know). As far as I’m concerned, there are various reasons for this. Usually it’s feeling dissatisfied about how something is turning out and not having the time or headspace to work out why or how to improve it. […]
Playing with passementerie
Passementerie is the art of making braids, fringes, tassels and edgings for cloth or furnishings: think of those heavily fringed lampshades and swanky tasselled tie-backs around curtains in stately homes. On Heritage Craft’s Red List it’s an endangered craft, which means there are serious concerns about its ongoing viability. It’s not really my style interiors-wise, […]
Staggered twining over double warp
In fact, according to Annemarie Seiler-Baldinger in her inestimable Textiles: A Classification of Techniques, the full name of this technique is (deep breath) staggered weft twining over a double transposed warp. In plain English, you are twining two separate warp layers alternately, at the same time as the warp threads pair alternately with the ones […]
Warped exhibition by Prism Textiles
The Warped exhibition by Prism Textiles is now in full swing at the Art Pavilion in Mile End, London. At the private view last Wednesday evening Sumi Perera gave the opening speech, dressed in an outfit that most of us instantly coveted! Some of my stitching friends (Carol and Jane) turned up wearing shibori indigo […]
Paper vessel workshop with Lucy Baxandall
Last weekend I was back at Morley College, but this time as a student rather than as a tutor. I was doing a two-day workshop on making paper vessels (3D papermaking) with Lucy Baxandall, a paper and book artist based in Northumberland. The first day we focused on cotton, using pulp and making sheets to […]
Warped: Prism Textiles exhibition 2023
Where has this year gone? It’s March already and this is my first blog post of the year. I seem to have been busier than usual, as I’ve started teaching basketry evening classes at Morley College (more about this another time) and also I’ve been editing the March issue of the Basketmakers’ Association Journal. That’s […]
