Author: Textile Study Group

The Star Project Award 2024

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Star Project Award text, brightly coloured embroidery and thread
Star Project Award

                                          “Patchworking Motherhood”

We’re thrilled to announce that the project was launched on Monday 14 October.

I met Fiona Wilkinson, lead occupational therapist for the Dorset perinatal community health team, at a wild swimming group in Studland, Dorset. Our shared interests in early motherhood, mental health, and my desire to bring textiles practice into this space, sparked the idea to apply for the STAR project award together.

Planning the project, from a simple idea to a proposal for an 8 week course, was incredibly rewarding. By working through the numbers on a spreadsheet, considering amount of participants, number of sessions, cost of materials, room hire, staffing and other costs, we were able to calculate and adjust the plan until we reached a viable project within the funding available. This led us to make decisions on where to focus the funds, and where we might save money, for example borrowing instead of buying.

Since this project is aimed at Dorset Perinatal Mental Health clients, offering the course free of charge was a priority. We also recognised the challenge of balancing caring for young children with engaging in textile craft. So, we budgeted for additional staff to help with children during sessions.

In planning the project, we reflected on whether an outcome was necessary. Creating a finished item is often the assumed goal of a textiles course, however, in my experience, a focus on end result can sometimes interfere with in-the-moment making. I want participants to engage intuitively with the process whilst letting go of expectation. However, we also recognised the value of completing a personal patchwork to keep as a memento of this time.

Our aim is to create a non-judgemental, safe and welcoming space where participants will be invited to focus on themselves for the time that they are with us. This will include plenty of tea, coffee, and maybe even cake! We will encourage a light-hearted and instinctive no rules approach to piecing and stitching, whilst supporting participants to work to their own interest and pace to complete a textiles piece that will feel meaningful to them within the timeframe.

Participants are very welcome to bring any fabrics they would like to use for their patchwork, although this isn’t necessary as we have gathered together a large supply of materials and plenty of embroidery threads for them to rummage through and select from.

I look forward to reporting back once the project is well underway, and would like thank the Textile Study Group for their generous award and for selecting our project, Patchworking Motherhood.

Emma McGinn

This warm and welcoming room as it was set up ready and waiting for the mothers with their children to arrive.

Return to Star Project Award on the TSG website for more information about the award and an application form.

Fragile Forms-Deconstructed

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Fragile Forms-Deconstructed

TSG member Jean Draper talks about our recent Continuing Professional Development workshop with Amanda Clayton:

The weekend was doubly important to me because, due to illness and Covid, it was my first face to face meeting with the group for a long time. There had been zoom meetings which, though good, are only a substitute for real contact with friends and colleagues.

Fragile Forms – Deconstructed. With Amanda Clayton

The workshop began on Friday evening with a very informative talk by Mandy in which she outlined her development as an artist from an early age through to the present day. It was very pleasing to hear her mention and acknowledge family members, teachers, other artists and colleagues who influenced her. I was specially interested to learn of her collaborations with medical and academic people to research and provide information on health issues to others, including NHS consultants. The resulting work was published in medical/academic journals.

Amanda Clayton, Loss. Photography: Dawn Jutton



Using the natural forms of our choice as starting points, and using a variety of white and neutral materials, on Saturday our work began with a series of fairly brief, but challenging, ‘tasks’ set by Mandy. Beginning with observation and representation and moving towards abstraction, each task was carefully structured and supported by a full explanation and an informative hand-out which included a possible visual vocabulary. We were encouraged, as we worked with delicate materials, to record our ideas in photographs and notes and to consider the relevance to our personal experience and skills. Each day every member had individual tutorial time with Mandy.

We were treated to an amazing display of Mandy’s beautiful, obsessively hand-stitched work, numerous samples and a huge variety of threads and fabrics to supplement our own. Throughout Mandy generously shared her methods and use of materials.


Jean Draper.

Shelley Rhodes, TSG member, workshop investigation

Summer School 2025

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Summer School 2025

The theme for our 2025 Summer School is Materiality.

This is a residential summer school tutored by Textile Study Group members and open to everyone with workshops led by Textile Study Group members Alice Fox, Sue Green and Mandy Pattullo. 

Summer school is held each July at Hillscourt Hotel, Rose Hill, Rednal, Birmingham B45 8RS.
Monday 14 – Thursday 17 July 2025.

The three workshops will use materiality as the springboard for the creative process. It will be an opportunity to play with materials gathered, explore the touch and feel of old fabrics and experiment with deconstruction and reconstruction ideas.

Alice Fox
Mandy Pattullo

Your experienced and inspirational tutors will guide and support you in developing your ideas and creating a fun and exciting experience. Choose from the following three workshops:

Here and 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.

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.

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.

Full details are all available on our website and bookings open on 14th October.

Sue Green, hand stitch
Sue Green, print and hand stitch

Summer School 2024

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Summer School 2024
Each July we run a Summer School led by a rotating trio of tutors from our membership.
This year our Summer School theme was ‘Travelling Lines’ with tutors Jane McKeating  , Polly Pollock   and Janet Edmonds .
We’ve gathered together some reflections from our tutors on this year’s event.

Janet tells us:

“I was pleased to be able to stand in for Dorothy at short notice. The students were all very accommodating and understood that life happens and changes have to be made.

I planned a course that fitted as well as possible with Dot’s requirements list.

We made zig zag books and filled them with a range of different marks bearing in mind the overarching theme of ‘Travelling Lines’: Lines of communication between people, railway lines, phone lines, Ley lines; lots to choose from.  Many students chose pathways through countryside and referenced their own neighbourhoods. 

We used a variety of tools to draw lines that extended across the paper. Students made their own brushes and tried drawing with spaghetti in addition to the more usual pens and crayons. Small areas were selected through a view finder to interpret into stitch.

There was a good atmosphere amongst all participants and everyone intermingled with other groups during breaks and at meal times too.”

Polly explains:

“It was exciting, but also a venture into the uncertainty of teaching a basketry course to students who usually enrol on textile courses. The group I worked with were so open to exploring something new, learning fresh skills and working with unfamiliar materials. We spent the first two days working in a fairly structured way, while thinking and talking about how each student felt they wanted to take this forwards.

It was so interesting and inspiring to see how each person brought something of themselves and their interests to what they chose to work on over the remaining two days in a way in which was most relevant for them.    

Not everyone completed what they started during the summer school, but since going home these students completed their work and sent me photos, which is so rewarding that they were enthusiastic enough about what they’d started to go home and finish it. Several students have emailed to say what they want to do next, and sent photos of what they went home and made after the course.”

Jane’s thoughts:

“My group of 16 were looking at how we narrated journeys through drawing and textiles. All came prepared with an idea of a journey they wanted to explore, and these ranged from exciting international trips, inspiring walks down their own gardens, and personal family journeys. We explored these through both observation and imagination, using collage, simple print and hand stitch and each of the participants created a series of small works – supported by myself and the group to explore their own ideas.

We had a wonderful mix of first-time participants and two members who had been attending Summer School for 34 and 38 years. We also had several international members. This mix gave the group a really special quality, so great discussions and support was felt by all of us. The room was busy with activity from early in the morning till late at night and the range and quality of work produced was very creative and innovative. Everyone arrived a very personal solution to capturing their journey while contributing to a great group dynamic.”

Thank you to our three tutors and all our enthusiastic students.

Details and booking for our 2025 summer school will soon be available on our website.