The Stitch Safari Podcast

This episode explores ten textile and embroidery artist websites looking for features that promote and explore their vision, with basic tips on what I look for and don't want to find in website design.  It's thought-provoking if you already have a website and informative if you're setting one up. 

Ideas on what may appeal to the new embroiderer, the traditional embroiderer, the textile artist or someone who may love collecting sewing-related paraphernalia?

This is an expedition into an artistic duo who create magic - two artists had a vision to conceive a world that hovers within and between photography and embroidery, traversing and immersing both arts with an almost palpable dynamism - yet the images are static, serene, and stationary.

In this episode, I have two very different, very inspiring new books ready to review - and I chose them for various reasons - but most of all for their value - they delivered something special in terms of content, emotion, insight into process, and that ever-present, behemoth, technique and creativity.

The Dorset Button is something very different indeed - something that remains handmade and meant to be decorative not simply utilitarian.

Not all online video tutorials are professionally crafted or indeed offer great content - but many do, so buyer beware, do your due diligence, check out what’s on offer, understand exactly what it is you’re after and what exactly it is that you’ll receive in the tutorial.

Dolls, those miniature human figures so beloved by the young and the young at heart are a worldwide phenomenon - they’re a means of imitation helping to satisfy a child’s need or instinct to copy and learn through play, but they’re also a BFF.
Dolls are time travelers with a series of complex stories to tell about resilience, racism, culture, tradition, family relationships, childhood, memories, escapism, and love and embroidery adds emotion, and individuality to every doll.

Straw has been used to decorate and embellish costumes and ecclesiastical garments since the 1600s - some sources believe that straw was used as an imitation for goldwork embroidery hence the name, poor man’s Gold - it is very reminiscent of goldwork embroidery.

Truly successful embroidery relies on colour to express emotion and mood, focal point, suggest patterns, retain traditions and relate cultural storytelling - when you think about it, colour has a lot riding on its shoulders, but it’s a burden of pure pleasure once you break through that confidence barrier - and that’s a huge struggle for a lot of people, so let’s break down some of those barriers in this episode of Stitch Safari, let’s offer some insights into how to use colour in embroidery, what suggestions may help people conquer colour confidence and what other embroiderers do to help them choose their colour palletes.

In this episode, I’d like to swing the pendulum back a little towards a book that forges inspiration through the study of historical textiles to see the process of 27 modern-day working embroiderers.  Published in 1993 it’s a gem of a book - and belongs to a time that really was one of the Golden Ages of English embroidery.