London Embroidery School

Central London Embroidery School

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June’s Student of the Month

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As we go striding into July, it is time to annouce that June’s Student of the Month is….. @craftswithadz !

Tambour sequins practise By Craftsbyadz

 

They took a Tambour beading class with us back when we had classes in the studio (seems like forever ago now!), taught by one of our wonderful tutors Amy Burt. You can see the practise that has gone into these skills as the work is looking very even.

‘Belle’ from the live action Disney Film costume By Craftsbyadz

We look forward to seeing where these skills will be put to use as they are a keen Disney and Broadway lover, recreating minature costumes for their collection of OOAK dolls.

 

Tambour embroidery By Craftsbyadz

Working on a minature scale can be challenging at the best of times so seeing these pieces coming together is really astounding. Especially trying to scale down the embroidery which can already be pretty fiddly at real scale!

If you would like to be the July’s #studentofthemonth, use the hashtag #londonembroideryschool or tag us when sharing your photos from your London Embroidery School class or the things you have gone onto make following one of our class.

All Images courtesy of @craftsbyadz

 

Out of the Blue: 50 Years of the Designers Guild at the FTM

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The Designers Guild is a renowned design studio that has played a key role in the world of interiors. Established in 1970 by Tricia Guild OBE, the Designers Guild has since reinvented interior design within our homes. From furnishing fabrics,wallcovering and upholstery to bed and bath collections, it has grown from its humble beginnings in London to becoming an influential global successful brand.

Out of the Blue: Fifty Years of Designers Guild is the exhibition currently being held in celebration of its long history and influential power at the Fashion and Textiles Museum in London. It explores the creative approach of Designers Guild’s founder, Tricia Guild OBE, looking at her inspiration, design methodology and the techniques, processes and materials that go into each and every collection.

The museum first leads into a sitting space that showcases the beautiful wallpaper that was specially designed to celebrate the Out of the Blue exhibition in all its majestic beauty and detail. It is here that you can witness the evolution of the initial hand painted imagery into its finished high quality digitally printed wallpaper as well as a chance to sit down to flick through fabric samples and the accompanying exhibition book, ‘Out of the Blue: Fifty Years of Designers Guild’.

The early years

This leads onto the main exhibition space that gives us an insight to the unique collections that the studio has created over the years. This includes the Village Collection, created within the early years, rich with colours and a unique style, as well as a look into Tricia Guild’s love for floral designs that has played a key role throughout Designers Guild’s history through the Flower Power space.

Travellers’ Tales: Indian Summer       Travellers’ Tales: Venetian

In contrast, the collections for Travellers’ tales brand shows the impact of different cultures within the Designers Guild’s collections. The Venetian collection draws inspiration from the elegant ornate designs of the Italian Renaissance and the Indian Summer collection is cleverly draped to invoke the feeling of summer and rich culture alongside its beautiful colours.

The Shape of Modernity

The Designers Guild has also looked towards Modernism through The Shape of Modernity which combines many products both current and in the past, often as a result of working in collaboration with many designers, resulting in a stunning space that is full of geometric patterns and ombre patterns that are digitally printed today at a large scale.

        Silks                         Embroidery and crewel work

The upstairs exhibition space explores the design process that goes into each collection. With displays looking at silk and embroidery it looks at the fabrics, colours to techniques and the target audience. These aspects that are carefully considered and laid out alongside their finished products, giving us the insight into the inspiration and the carefully thought out properties of each object.

There is also a particular emphasis towards the importance of moodboards and hand painting techniques. With every collection, Tricia Guild always starts with mood boards that draw inspiration from numerous sources such as architecture and fashion. Using these moodboards the design studio experiment with hand painted imagery before getting developed and refined digitally. While the use of rotary screen printing used in the beginning has been replaced by digital printing in 2010, each design starts of life by being hand drawn before being developed into the highest quality products and designs.

 

Overall, this exhibition is a great celebration of the fifty years of Designers Guild with a fantastic insight into the history and the collections. A fantastic source of inspiration for those that are passionate about the home and interiors and I can’t wait to see what the next fifty years will bring.

 

Words and photos by Jenny Li

Out of the Blue: Fifty Years of Designers Guild

14 February – 14 June 2020

Fashion and Textile Museum,

83 Bermondsey Street, London, SE1 3XF

Opening Hours:

Tuesday – Saturday, 11am – 6pm

Thursdays until 8pm

Sundays until 5pm

Ticket Pricing: £9.90 Adults / £8.80 concessions / £7 Students / Free entry for under 12s

 

Alexander McQueen Flagship

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London is very lucky to be able to offer a wealth of great free exhibitions and museums on many subjects. This open to all attitude really helps to keep feeding the minds of our designers and innovaters that one can go out and have your eyes opened to all sorts of  information. One such jem that might be a little lesser known is the top floor of the flagship Alexander McQueen store on Old Bond Street.

They have started to use the stop floor as more of an exhibition type space, sharing insights from the vast archives that the house of McQueen holds. At the moment, the space is dedicated to roses, curated by the Creative Director Sarah Burton.

What we found really special about this space, as an embroiderer in particular is that you can get right up close to the pieces to see the details often lost in show and large scale exhibitions. Something that we found even with very well done exhibitions like Savage Beauty. In addition to this they are sharing a lot of the background research and technical craftsmanship that goes into making a collection and show with this kind of dramatic results. There are development moodboards, fitting notes, embroidery placements onto pattern pieces and draping directed onto the model. There is also a viewing booth with footage from the shows to fully round out the experience and see it in the final context for which it was intended to be consumed.

If you find yourself in the area, it’s definately worth a trip it to see some beautiful things and get some of the background scoop on how these things all come together. The notes and quotes from behind the scenes really give you a sense of being emersed into their world. We are already looking forward

Day 3 of our 10k Celebrations

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We have had a competition, day 1. We have had a giveaway, Day 2. Therefore on Day 3 of our 10k celebrations we have a Discount to offer you.

Did you pick up on our hint at the launch? We will be knocking 10% off the Beginners Monogramming Class on 11th Sept 2019 until Friday 6th Sept or while places last. You can access this using the discount code TYINSTADAY3

 

For another opportunity to be a winner, tag us in your images on instagram from the class or what you have learnt to be entered into our student of the month competition, use the hashtag #londonembroideryschool 😉

Not your thing? Don’t worry there are still plenty more exciting offers coming up that are sure to be right up your street. Check in next week to see what we reveal for Day 4.

Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up – Exhibition Visit

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The exhibition Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up is currently at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London and we recently took the chance to visit. This unique show gives a detailed overview of Kahlo’s life: her family and heritage; her politics; her relationship with mural painter Diego Rivera; the near-fatal accident that caused her a lifetime of pain; and most importantly, how she constructed her image and the way in which she lived her life.

Kahlo’s home in Mexico, La Casa Azul (The Blue House).

Upon Kahlo’s death in 1954, her husband Rivera locked up her most valuable possessions in the bathroom of the Casa Azul (The Blue House, their home in Mexico) and instructed that it not be opened until 15 years after her death. In 2004 this bathroom was opened, and the contents of the room went on display at the Casa Azul as a museum dedicated to her life. These objects are what now fill the exhibition space at the V&A, carefully shipped thousands of miles to be shown outside of Mexico for the first time.

Frida Kahlo and Family, 1926, photograph by Guillermo Kahlo.
Kahlo challenges gender stereotypes by wearing a suit.

The exhibition begins with old photographs of Kahlo and her family, some of which are adorned with Kahlo’s handwritten notes. Some simply label family members, whereas others are more personal: for example, on the back of Kahlo’s Communion photo she has scrawled “¡IDIOTA!” as she renounced Catholicism later in life.

Pre-columbian jade beads, possibly assembled by Frida Kahlo. Museo Frida Kahlo.

The show continues through a series of rooms to Kahlo’s accessories: heavy jade necklaces; crescent earrings featuring paired birds, which are traditional of Mexican jewellery; and hand-woven ‘Rebozo’ shawls and ‘Morrale’ sack bags. These items highlight Kahlo’s pride in her Mexican heritage.

Revlon nail varnishes, compact and lipstick in Kahlo’s favourite shade, ‘Everything’s Rosy’.

We then move on to Kahlo’s possessions, perhaps one of the most personal parts of the exhibition. Intimate items are on display such as used lipsticks and empty medicine bottles accompanied by letters to and from her various doctors.

Plaster corset, painted and decorated by Frida Kahlo. Museo Frida Kahlo.

Kahlo’s suffering due to childhood polio and a car accident at the age of 18 lies at the foundation of some of these objects. For most of her life she wore uncomfortable corsets to help support her back and alleviate pain, some of which were made of plaster and decorated with painting as Kahlo used them like a canvas.

Left: Cotton Huipil with chain stitch embroidery, cotton skirt with printed floral motifs.
Right: Guatemalan cotton coat worn with Mazatec Huipil and plain floor-length skirt.

Finally, the main feature of the exhibition is a stunning display case of Kahlo’s clothing. Kahlo is renowned for her combinations of indigenous garments from different regions of Mexico, and she was photographed in such outfits many times. To see them up close in real life is breathtaking.

Detailed embroidery is present in most of the outfits, from complexly shaded flowers and birds to cross stitch to traditional Chinese embroidery (due to Kahlo’s fascination with Chinatown when she moved to the USA with Rivera). The exhibition gives details of her most striking outfits, describing how she was followed by children when in the USA, who asked “Where is the circus?”.

Self Portrait with Monkeys, 1943. Oil on Canvas, 81.5 x 63cm.

There are some of Kahlo’s paintings – mainly self portraits as she used herself as a subject when painting from her bed – but the exhibition mainly focuses on Kahlo’s items and how she presented the complex layers of her identity within her life. It states that her wardrobe was not staged: she dressed up even when she wasn’t expecting visitors, and even when she was in bed rest.

Frida Kahlo on the Bench, 1939. © Nickolas Murray Photo Archives.

Frida Kahlo: Making Herself Up is a bewitching and intimate exhibition. The items on display are fascinating, and through them the personal details of how Kahlo naturally lived an artistic life – despite her misfortunes and pain – are revealed. A must-see for anyone interested in textiles, and anyone interested in Frida Kahlo’s complex and inspiring life.

Purchase tickets at the V&A website here.

Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams

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Runway through the years #Dior #runway #couture

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Every now and then, there is an exhibition that we feel we just have to see, and usually one holds out until it (hopefully) comes to London. However the risk of missing out on ‘Christian Dior: Designer of Dreams’ at Musee Des ArtsDecoratifs was one that was too great and we felt compelled to go. So, Natasha made the trip to Paris to see the much hyped display.

 

The exhibition begins with some history of Christian Dior’s family and his life before setting up the house as an art gallery owner and fashion illustrator. A brief introduction to the facets of the house is followed by the first main gallery. In this room, each section is divided by colour, each cabinet displaying a palette with a variety of dresses, 12” miniatures and accessories.

 

As an embroiderer, one of the most outstanding aspects of this exhibition was the level of detail you could see in the gowns and the emphasis that was placed on showing off the incredible textures. These were reflected in the papercut flowers and foliage that hung from the ceiling in a few of the rooms which were inspired by the fragrances that make up Dior’s famous perfumes.

 

 

Some of the textiles could be described as traditional beading, whilst others would be considered to be more experimental, playing with feathers and layering but all were undeniably beautiful.

 

 

They also had an in-house embroiderer demonstrating some tambour beading onto a panel of one of the gown and chatting with the public about what she was doing. The piece was framed up in a large slate frame, with one end complete and, the other drafted on. The drafts and drawings for the piece were hanging to one side of her with a partially completed gown on display behind her. The finished gown was part of the final gallery to put the whole process into context.

 

 

The white gallery was reminiscent of the layout of the Savage Beauty exhibition at the V&A museum in London where you were dwarfed by the pieces, however here the emphasis was placed purely on the cut of the garments. Each one is the toile of a gown we had already seen in the body of the exhibition to explain the development of each piece and the alterations process it has been through to get to the final design

 

 

Final last gallery was all the real show-stopping gowns, the space itself adds to the gravity of the items on display. They enhanced the experience with moving light displays across the walls which gave the impression of gold snow, unashamedly playing up to the couture fairytale.

 

 

 

 

It would be fair to say this exhibition was excellent, going around it all took at least 2 and a half hours going through it all but one could have stayed much longer. The number of pieces on display and the generous space that was given to each one made it a very leisurely experience. I really enjoyed the way they played with scale in the layout, starting off the with miniatures gallery, then allowing you to get up close with the real sized pieces and then immersing you in the white and final galleries.

If you would like to read another perspective on the exhibition, have a read of Tina Isaac-Goizé’s thoughts for Vogue here.