Jenny Rydell - My Garden

Jenny Rydell works mainly with natural fabrics, paint and appliqué, often embellished with buttons and beads. Her medium is machine embroidery and some might say that her 'style' is quirky or 'naive'. Her inspiration for this hanging comes from the lovely gardens, allotments and greenhouses around Didsbury. The flowers and vegetables are full of life and colour which are reflected in her hanging. She painted the images onto calico using fabric paints and dyes and added fine detail with free machine embroidery. She then mounted the panels on to recycled denim from a pair of jeans.

Janice Fine - Feathers 1

Janice Fine finds her inspiration in her garden and the wider natural world. Layers of fabrics, some of which she prints using a gelli plate are blended together with hand stitch.  A combination of machine stitch and simple hand stitches are used to explore marks, and to suggest and develop images. Feathers 1 uses a limited range of basic embroidery stitches to embellish the background fabric enhancing the simplicity of the feather print. Janice enjoys using a variety of papers, fabrics  such as cotton, linen and silk and a wide range of different types and weights of thread.

Jane Hadfield  - A Light Exists in Spring

Jane Hadfield creates the extraordinary from the ordinary: plant, pottery shard or found objects are the departure point for unique exploration and discovery. Influences include fine art and textile artists and vintage textiles which reflect her love of pattern and colour.

 Jane’s featured textile is inspired by Emily Dickinson’s poem,  ‘A Light Exists in Spring’ which allows thoughts to focus on familiar and joyful things: a hope that Spring brings light and new life. Jane’s piece echoes this sentiment and comprises a patchwork of hand painted and stitched vintage and recycled fabrics. Stab, running, satin and seed stitch are applied until eventually ‘the whole becomes greater than the sum of the parts’.

Judith Warrender  - Fallen Leaf

Judith Warrender’s style can be abstract or figurative depending on her choice of subject matter. Her inspiration here is autumn leaves, stitched as a quick machine sketch. Further simple hand stitching with hand-dyed threads and silks, together with the addition of some distressed machine stitching using water soluble fabric reflects the decaying structure of the leaf. The appliqued red and pink sheer fabrics represent the colours of autumn.

Angela Oswald  - Tree Slice - Summer Poplar

Angela Oswald explores the natural textures and patterns found in the flowering plants and trees of her garden. This piece is based on a cross-section of a tree imagined through a microscope which shows the cells and the vessels of the tree-trunk. To create this impression Angela combines free machine stitch and hand embroidery to develop texture, pattern and linear detail.  Angela’s favoured fabric and thread combinations are drawn from natural fibres, primarily cottons, silks and wools. 

Sue Gibson - Abstract Leaf Cell

Sue Gibson’s abstract textile art is inspired by the colour, pattern and texture found in the natural environment.  Her semi-relief work features abstract, fluid geometric shapes that take inspiration from nature and Sue aims to represent the beauty, elegance and fragility of life. Her textile piece is based on the patterns and shapes found in a decaying leaf. The piece was worked in a natural colour palette wrapping rope in raffia and paper string, weaving and knotting with cotton and paper  thread.

Lynn Atkinson - Wild Meadow

Lynn Atkinson’s embroideries reflect the qualities of the natural environment with its increasingly endangered wild flora and fauna. In this piece, Lynn has chosen a selection of vintage materials to use as a textured background which has then been embellished with delicate daisies, poppies and grasses. Lynn prefers hand stitching especially running stitch, French knots and seeding stitch both for detail and back ground.  She likes to mix old fabrics and laces and she works with a variety of different threads.

Carol Stow - Owl

Carol Stow is inspired by birds, animals and flowers and also enjoys producing mature quirky three-dimensional human figures who exude personality and humour. In this piece, the owl is completely needle felted using tiny amounts of wool fibres to show the feathers and eye details.  The process of needle felting is at the heart of Carol’s textile practice but her work can also include wet felting.  She uses hand stitching to embellish her forms and enhance her unique characters. She loves colour and often dyes her own threads and fibres to achieve randomly mixed effects. 

Jean Marsden - A Formal Garden

Jean Marsden’s work mirrors the plants and gardens of stately homes around the UK. This piece is inspired by the sunken Italianate garden at Lyme Park. Jean uses hand stitching and crochet to interpret the formal beds, hedges and features found in the garden. She is very much aware of environmental issues and her selection of non-biodegradable recycled and sometimes non-traditional fabrics and threads reflect this concern. For example the white flowerbeds are shredded plastic bag, the grey corner beds are lengths of plastic drinking straws and the red flowers are small circles of plastic drink bottles cut into flower shapes and then heated.

Ruth Smith - Bloom (Lily)

Ruth Smith draws inspiration from plant forms or landscape. Colour, shape and texture are all of central importance to her work. Her initial ideas might be drawn, painted or appliqued and she then uses a variety of threads to interpret her designs. In this piece the base fabric is a heavy calico overlaid with directional free machine stitching which is used to reveal the structure of the lily flower.

 Ruth also uses cotton or silk fabrics or handmade felts as a base for her work. Her choices are led by the design and the final effect desired. 

Gill Crompton- Black Lily

Gillian Crompton is excited by images found in the natural world. Colour, shape, form and repeating patterns form the basis of her work.  Gillian’s textile ‘The Black Lily’ shows her skilful use of colour. Applied fabrics are manipulated to simulate light shining through the petals and then further enhanced by machine stitch. She uses a wide range of materials, incorporating pastels and paint on silk and sheer fabrics. She makes good use of recycled and hand printed papers and fabrics, -‘ nothing is wasted nothing is thrown away’.

Sue Law - The Lily Pond

Sue Law’s inspiration is drawn from coastal and botanical subjects.  Surface texture plays an important role in much of her work. Her 3D vessel is a homage to water lilies blooming in a garden pond - some in bud, others just opening.  Sue’s preferred technique is wet felting, using merino wool with a variety of silks and other fine fibres, to produce a colourful surface display. Once felted, these are further enhanced with surface manipulation and frequently finished with hand stitching, adding intricate detail.

Jill Crowther – Geraniums

Jill Crowther likes to take an experimental approach in her work and lets ideas evolve from those ‘what if?’ moments. She is inspired by what she sees around her and is particularly drawn to surface texture.  Her recent work is inspired by daily walks from her doorstep and uses Eco printing with plants and leaves from her garden. This piece is layered and stitched white fabrics that were steamed with geranium leaves to change the surface and colour. The irregularity of the leaf prints and the serendipity of not knowing what will happen make each piece a surprise. Jill enjoys layering and piecing fabrics and papers and then uses colour and simple stitches to emphasise and enhance the surface.  She has a preference for natural fabrics that are often from repurposed or recycled clothing.

Liz Smith - Bougainvillea

Liz Smith is drawn to pattern found primarily in the natural environment. Linear qualities excite her and form the basis of much of her work. Her textile, based on Bougainvillea focuses on the repeating shapes of leaf and flower with a pop of magenta colour.  Liz’s preferred technique is invariably hand stitching using a limited variety of simple stitches through which to interpret her drawings. Wherever possible, Liz tries to use re cycled or repurposed cotton and linen fabrics and cotton or silk stranded threads.

Jane Rogerson - Dragonfly Pond

Jane Rogerson’s inspiration can be a patch of newly sprouted purple and yellow crocus flowers seen on her daily walks, or the view across the local salt marsh flats. Jane’s chosen piece focuses on bulrushes grasses and water growing near her home. The base is wet felted and then enhanced with free machine stitching and hand embroidery.  Jane also enjoys making 3d felted vessels using either the fine merino wool or coarser Shetland wool.