Inspirations Issue 89

As I write this, here in the Southern Hemisphere we are enjoying all the delights of spring; warmer weather, longer days, more sunshine and of course, everything is bursting into bloom. Given the number of glorious floral projects featured inside we have dedicated this magazine to flowers but looking back over twenty plus years of issues of Inspirations, we should really have done the same for every one. Embroiderers love flowers! By far the most popular subject for embroidery, they can be found in pieces dating back thousands of years and in every culture on the planet. They can be depicted very simply with a few detached chains or in intricate detail with numerous complex stitching techniques. Flower forms can be stylised and fanciful as they are in crewel work or…

The Royal School of Needlework was established in 1872 by Lady Victoria Welby with a triple aim: first to keep the techniques of hand embroidery alive which remains , our principal aim. Second to be a ‘social enterprise’ offering an occupation to educated women who would otherwise have been destitute and finally, to establish hand embroidery as an art form and not just a craft – which is the aim we continue to focus on today. In century we with renowned designers and artists such as William Morris, Edward Burne Jones, Walter Crane and Rev. Selwyn Image and were involved with many of their large designs. All of these would have required a team of stitchers working on them. Our work on these large pieces helped develop our two key mantras.…

Big, bold and often confronting, Jerome’s stitching addresses issues as diverse as terrorism, opal mining and the local flora and fauna around his home in Bellingen, New South Wales. His unique style is colourful and dynamic and his choice of stitch as a medium is a unique facet of the images that he creates. Born in Amsterdam in 1950, Jerome attended several different schools before entering the cadet school of the merchant navy at fifteen. At nineteen years of age, he decided to immigrate and moved to Australia to make it his home. Jerome married and worked at various occupations but when he was thirty and recovering from a bout of illness that left him fairly immobile, he asked his then wife to show him how to do chain stitch. He…

Helen M. Stevens was born in Belmont, Surrey and her early years were spent travelling with her father in the RAF. Later educated at The County Grammar School, Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk she studied the history of textiles and design informally during her early secretarial career. In 1981 she established her studio, True Embroideries, and since then her original embroideries have become internationally well-known and are now in collections worldwide. Helen has exhibited widely, both in one woman exhibitions at a variety of venues and with the Society of Women Artists, initially at the Westminster Gallery and more recently the Mall Galleries in London. Other early venues included the Harrods Art Gallery, the Stanley Gibbons Gallery in the Strand, The Mary Rose exhibition, The British Museum “Making of England” and the Palace…

In the many years since I first “gave up the day job” and became a professional art embroiderer – and I am, in 2016, celebrating 35 years as a textile artist – two questions have been put to me over and over again: where do I get my inspiration and where did I train? Both have simple answers: everywhere and nowhere! I am eternally grateful for living where I do, in the heart of rural Suffolk. I was a child of the Royal Air Force; my father a Squadron Leader in the RAF, my mother (during WWII) in the WRAF, and until my 11th birthday I travelled with the family, both overseas and throughout the United Kingdom – we had homes from Cornwall in the far south to Unst, the northern-most…

The Stumpwork Masterclass Alison Cole Self-publish 2015 | Soft Cover 198pg ISBN 9780994392305 | RRP $49.95 If you have any interest in raised embroidery, traditional or contemporary, you will want a copy of this book. Alison has painstakingly researched the techniques used in historical pieces, not only to record how they were traditionally executed, but to provide vital information on how these techniques can be reproduced today. Given that the zenith of Stuart stumpwork was around three hundred and fifty years ago, the availability of materials has changed considerably. The detailed information provided in this book offers not only alternatives for unavailable materials but, contemporary methods for working some traditional techniques as well as contemporary pieces. The book begins with a brief history of stumpwork and an analysis of the particular design elements…