Gail chats to Mistianne Guzman, who has been quilting since she was 25 years old and was going crazy for some color.  She then walked into a store that had fabric and the rest is history. 

Mistianne is mostly self-taught.  She not only creates quilts for the joy of it (the smaller the pieces the better), but also for competition, having had her quilts travel all over the world. One of her quilts was used in a yearly calendar for clients. She has completed a skill stage 4 programme with School of Stitched Textiles in patchwork and quilting and has gone on to tutor for them for the last couple of years.  She has owned her own online quilt store specializing in batiks, taught many classes, and is an avid hand quilter. Besides quilting she is a costume mistress and creates professional ballet costumes and crochets and embroiders in her spare time. 

[email protected]

insta- @thestraybobbin

etsy- thestraybobbin

SST Online Textile Courses

Ruth qualified as a Graphic Designer at Leeds Metropolitan University, specialising in illustration, in 1986. She then gained a teaching qualification at Manchester University.

She has spent many years as an Art teacher working in high schools and tertiary Colleges.

She now shares a studio with her partner Stuart Gray at Farfield Mill in Sedbergh, Cumbria, where they work, teach, and sell their paintings. You can find out more about Ruth or see her work on her website. Ruth also tutors an online video course for us on Drawing for Design.

Susan makes sculptural textile work combining mixed-media practices with fabric and embroidery across digital and manual platforms. She exploits the physics of light as it interacts with the structure of the triangular embroidery thread. The light scatters in multiple directions off the sides of the thread, creating different tones and saturations of the base color. She also exploits the science of optics, relying on our brain’s ability to optically mix spots of color in close physical proximity. Further relying on the principles of color as taught by Joseph Albers and Johannes Itten et al, she exploits the vibratory effects of complementary colors and close saturation split complements. All of this creates a changeable optical environment activated by the viewer’s movement from side to side as they view the artwork. The viewer experience is one of puzzling beauty, playfulness and sometimes awe.

Gail and Debbie are chatting about how Debbie became interested in crafts, her favourite techniques, teaching online versus in the classroom, tips for getting the best from your tutor and how the group zoom sessions work.

Dr Gail Cowley talking about School of Stitched Textiles and how their distance learning courses work.