London Embroidery School

Central London based Embroidery School

textile art

Great Toronto: New Artist Textiles at the Fashion and Textiles Museum

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To celebrate London Design Festival, the Fashion & Textile Museum held a pop-up exhibition taken from the Textile Museum of Canada. The collection, Greater Toronto: New Artist Textiles, made its first appearance outside of North America at the Fashion & Textile museum, where it displayed fabric print designs from ten Canadian artists. The collection exploring from tonal,abstract designs to colourful and graphic designs.

As you enter the museum the work is all hung from the ceiling and reach down to the floor creating a dramatic impact of each design. Each design had a bold, graphic print exploring imagery of animals, architecture and linear patterns, all brought together by using warm colours of orange, red and blue to form more of a collection eventhough they are all by different artists.

The collection includes work from artists such as Jaime Angelopoulos, who works by translating subjective experiences of sensations, emotions and behaviour into physical medium like drawing or sculpture. Her drawings are bright with colour, using lines to weave throughout each other to create interesting abstract shapes.

Work from artist Ed Pien is also featured, whose work is more expressive, showing delicate linear drawings with ink, which almost look like mono-prints and artist Gary Taxili who creates retro, pop art style of work play with colour blocking and combining word with image to create communicative work.

Ed Pien

Gary Taxili

 

The collection also includes work from

  • Kim Adams
  • Bill Burns
  • Lyn Carter
  • Bonne Devine
  • Tazeen Qayyin
  • Ann Raina

To look at the collection, visit the Textile Museum of Canada website as it is only on show in London for 1 weekend.

London Design Festival runs from the 17th- 25th of September.

Sophie Standing- Textile Artist

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Impal, Sophie Standing

When we came across the work of Sophie Standing we were immediately drawn to the unique style she has developed in order to create these amazing animal portraits. Sophie has a broad knowledge of many techniques in the industry as she studied wood, metal, ceramics and textiles at Liverpool Hope University. It wasn’t until she graduated that she started experimenting with textile art to produce these works.

As all of her skills when it comes to sewing is self taught Sophie has gradually gained confidence when producing her designs. In a interview with aurifil.com she says

‘I have become far more expressive with my use of fabrics, using very bold flowers next to stripes and clashing abstract patterns.’

Hippo, Sophie Standing

Sophie grew up in Hampshire and for many years worked in England. In 2003 she moved to South Africa and now lives in Kenya. When moving, the inspiration to create wildlife animal portraiture started and along with her passion for textiles and Sophie was able to produce a gallery of animals and landscapes.

As seen in many of her designs Sophie is not afraid to use bold patterns or colours. We particularly like how she has transformed the more masculine, gray toned animals like the elephant. As you can see ‘Satao’ has definitely been given a vibrant personality as Sophie has layered patterned fabric and lots of colour over his body!

Satao, Sophie Standing

This style of work is predominantly made using a sewing machine using the free motion and darning foot. Sophie starts her pieces by sketching or painting the image onto fabric to create boundaries in order for the animal or landscape to look realistic when pattern and colour is added on top.

In process – Black Rhino, Sophie Standing

Layering is key in Sophie’s work and it’s not until you take a closer look at the designs that you see the mixture of fabric, machine embroidery and paint used.

 Sophie Standing, Black Rhino

If you would like to see more of Sophie Standing’s embroidery, visit her website here!

For more details see : www.sophiestandingart.com

Trish Burr

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Trish Burr is an embroidery artist from South Africa, who uses her amazing silk shading skills to create these stunningly detailed works of art!

Inspired by nature, Trish Burr does not hold back on colour, using luscious threads to create incredibly details pieces that do not underestimate her colourful Cape Town surroundings.

Trish Burr calls her work ‘miniature needle painting’, which we think is the prefect description! It’s delicate, detailed and intricate. Just stunning. She also has a range of books available to buy that describe how she works, and provide detailed instructions on how to stitch like her!

If you’d like to see more of Trish Burr’s beautiful work, visit her website here.

 

Fashion & Textile Museum – Marian Clayden Exhibition

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On 11th March 2016 a new exhibition opened in London’s Fashion and Textiles museum featuring various works by artist, Marian Clayden and we just had to go and check it out!

Clayden has produced various pieces from intricate jewellery to floor length hanging installation pieces all using various dying, resisting and discharge methods. Although the ‘do not touch’ signs are frequently seen, her works are very easy to view up close and it really adds to the exhibition being able to see the beautiful detail in her designs.

As well as hanging fabric, Clayden’s materials have been made up into garments, including a dress made from digital printed ink jet fabric 2003. Not only are finished garments displayed but also imagery of the behind the scenes processes!

Even though the majority of Clayden’s work is very fashion orientated in some of her earlier work have a visual focus as she concentrated a lot on how it was displayed. One of her works seen at the exhibition entitled ‘Ribbons’ was created using dyed, discharged, ripped and burnt silk hung from a wooden bar. The piece is always moving due to the weight of the fabric, so, along with the light, the colour tones are always changing.

The exhibition continues up stairs to explore her Global influences to many of her collections. The use of techniques changes as you can look up close at some beautiful Shibori and Ombré dyed garments. Clayden liked to be experimental and displayed is a garment created with a sandwich toaster!

 

Museum has tour guides informing you more about Marian Clayden’s work at regular times throughout the day but if you choose to look at the exhibition in your own time handouts are given for extra info!

The exhibition is open till 17th April 2016 so make sure you don’t miss out!

By Philippa Martin

 

Exhibition Details:

Location: 83 Bermondsey Street, London SE1 3XF

£9 adults / £7 concessions / £6 students / Children under 12 are free.

Open Tuesdays to Saturdays, 11am–6pm

Thursdays until 8pm

Sundays, 11am–5pm

Closed Mondays

A Short Background of Silk Shading

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You requested and we heard you, so the London Embroidery School is now working on a brand new course for you which will be Silk Shading. This super delicate technique is sometimes known as ‘painting with a needle’ as it combines a number of different coloured threads and needles to be used simultaneously in order to artfully blend them together. For this reason it is often used for naturally themed works, such as fruit, flowers and animals.

Floral Silk shading worked and designed by Noo B

This technique uses a variety of stitch lengths to create the natural appearance keeping an emphasis on blending colour, tonal and shade.

The style is thought to have originated in Far East where evidence of the technique has been found in artifacts from 5000 years ago in the Zhou Dynasty, Jiangu province of China. It was not until the 10th Century AD when it received Imperial recogniotion that it was elevated from being consider a domestic handicraft, to an art form.

Regional styles formed with subtle differences between them including Suzhou, Sichuan, Hunan and Guangdong embroidery. Of these, Suzhou shone the brightest and as time went on silk shading can also be know as Su embroidery.

It was not until the 15th Century that the west became aware of the technique and Italian painters started to explore it in religious works.

Embroidery from an Altar Frontal: Coronation of the Virgin, possibly 1459 Italy, Florence, 15th century embroidery: Artist unknown
Nowadays, artists/embroiderers such as Emilie Ferris has put their own take on silk shading and create portraits like the below using the subtle nuances of the technique to create very life like representations.
Emilie Ferris ‘Francis’ 2016
We will soon be releasing our course so stay posted for all the details