Tag: embroidery

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.

Introducing Vivienne Beaumont

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Introducing Vivienne Beaumont

Introducing Vivienne Beaumont as our most recent Textile Study Group member.

Vivienne originally studied Fine Art and has been an art teacher for a long time. She became increasingly interested in textiles, thanks to courses at Westhope College in Shropshire, which led to her being awarded a medal of excellence from City and Guilds. In 2019 she retired from teaching to do an MA at Hereford College of Art and she haven’t looked back since.

Vivienne found her artistic identity using symbolism, cloth and thread. The ephemerality and cyclical nature of life is at the core of her textile practice. she uses archetypal imagery to convey collective emotions, referencing the figurative, the mythological, nature, and the theme of transformation. Harvest, seeds and pomegranates represent both life force and loss. She likes to explore the commonality between us and also the cultural collective memory. She uses machine embroidery and print to tell personal and universal stories.

Drawing and design are key to Vivienne’s practice. She always starts with a drawing, which is often develop with Photoshop. She transfers her designs onto fabric with printing methods and enjoys the serendipity and creativity that occurs when handling the cloth.

Vivienne is also a member of the exhibiting Textile group Prism and The Society of Designer Craftsmen. She regularly exhibits at Spencer House Gallery in Tetbury.

Image that appears to be Little Red Riding Hood, surrounded by trees, with a Wolf standing next to her. To the right are images of scissors and cotton reels. The artwork is created in fabric and stitch.
The Edge of the Wood, Vivienne Beaumont

Making:50 at Farnham

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Making:50 at Farnham

The Textile Study Group marked its 50th anniversary in 2023. For half a century, this group has been at the forefront of innovative making, teaching and textile art practice, and we are still going strong. We are celebrating this milestone, and our achievements, with a significant exhibition of new and exciting work from our current membership: Making:50. The exhibition continues until 27th April at its third exhibition location: The Crafts Study Centre, Farnham. 

On Thursday 4th April there will be an opportunity to ‘Meet the Artists’, with six of our members in conversation with Dr Stephen Knott, Director of the Crafts Study Centre. 

On Tuesday 23rd April there will be an online closing event, with Julia Triston, Siân Martin and Mandy Pattullo in discussion with Stephen Knott about their own work, the impact of the Making:50 exhibition and future plans for the group against a backdrop of increased interest in textile research and practice. 

Event booking is via Crafts Study Centre website.

The beautiful, limited-edition publication we commissioned to accompany the exhibition is available from the Crafts Study Centre or you can order it for posting anywhere in the world from our online shop.

Alice Fox, March 2024