Textile Study Group

Here & Now, with Alice Fox

The detail that surrounds us can be fascinating, if we just allow ourselves to take it in. This course aims to open our eyes to what is around us, finding the potential in the ordinary. Led by the place and the material available, an experimental approach is encouraged. With a focus on objects and marks collected on short walks from the studio we will explore different techniques, making use of what we find and exploring ways of developing visual ideas on paper and cloth. This will be a chance to explore some alternative approaches to mapping, developing individual personal records of place.

Alice prefers to work within a set of boundaries, improvising within those constraints and learning through making. Alice will introduce techniques, providing starting points and exercises to generate visual ideas. Support will then be tailored to help students to develop their work in a way that is appropriate for their interests.

Alice works from her home studio and allotment plot in West Yorkshire. She predominantly works with found, gathered and allotment-grown materials, making unique sculptural surfaces and structures. She is published by Batsford and has a series of self-published titles.

Unmaking–remaking, with Sue Green

This course will explore the concept of ‘unmaking’ using cloth to retell new narratives. Experimental print and stitch processes will be explored responding to traces and memory.

Students should bring along an item of cloth or clothing with a personal connection but not something precious as it will be taken apart to reveal the hidden stories within and used to print from.

Outcomes will be facilitated through individual discussion and will form a series of samples to further develop independently.

All materials will be provided and a list of ‘optional extras’ will be provided beforehand.

Completing an MA in Fine Art in 2024, Sue also has 30 years’ experience teaching Art/Textiles. She has a BA Hons, a PGCE and currently maintains a studio practice alongside teaching in an FE College, where her students constantly inspire and educate her.
She joined the Textile Study Group in 2021 and currently shares the role of Events Office.

Textile Collage, with Mandy Pattullo

This gentle hand stitching course encourages you to bring together your own stash of old fabrics, lace and garments, that may be flawed through wear and tear, and transform them through textile collage techniques to find in them a new beauty.

Together we will deconstruct, layer and rearrange materials to create patchworked surfaces, which will be enhanced with stitch. You will develop a personal stitch language which might be based on pattern making with traditional stitches, refer to stitch conventions of other cultures or invent new ways to draw with stitch on to fabric.

There will be plenty of demonstrations and you will be presented with inspiring examples but you will also work intuitively to develop your own outcomes whether it be a book form, a series of related work or stitch samples.

Mandy is an artist from Northumberland. She re-cycles and reuses very old and often disintegrating materials in to new patchworks. She is an experienced teacher who enjoys facilitating others’ creativity through introducing them to the textile collage techniques she uses in her own practice.