Explorations in Textiles

Last year, I made the decision to enrol in the Explorations in Textiles course at Littleheath Barn Studios, and I am immensely grateful for this opportunity. My primary objective was to experiment with novel techniques and explore colour in a manner that had not been previously encountered.

The course has provided me with the autonomy to employ colour with boldness and confidence. Although I am mostly self taught, I have attended numerous art workshops, primarily focused on sketching, which had not adequately addressed colour theory.

The second compelling reason for my participation in this course was to gain insights from Liske, the tutor, into various methods of colouring fabric and to consider fabrics as integral components of mixed media. Through a combination of paint, print, dyeing, fabric manipulation, and sketching, I have acquired a wealth of knowledge that has profoundly influenced my artistic endeavours.

Commission Unique Handcrafted Art with Butterflies

I decided to try this piece after thinking how it could be done, after my woodland piece I wondered how I could take it a step further.

I’d bought the glass dome and for a long time I kept thinking what I could do with it, as well as how I’d put together the finished article. I purchased some natural wood coasters for the base to give an organic feel, it was then a case of creating a mossy scene using wool felt and appletons crewel wool to create several hundred French knots to keep with the organic theme. Topped this whole piece off with a real tortoishell butterfly.

my books are now open for commissions on these, please feel free to message me at tony@themanbroiderer.co.uk for more information and prices.

Popping Poppies

I’ve always loved poppies, mainly the kind that grow naturally in fields. Today there are many different types which as beautiful as they are, they don’t hold the same meaning to me.

obviously the poppies found wild in fields symbolise both world wars, which I admit I am obsessed with. It just grows anywhere and makes a boring meadow or fallow field into something truly beautiful, those small pops of red are just striking.

this new piece I have created is a stylised poppy field image that I hope emulates what I mean. Using a series of stem stitch and straight stitch to create a hay field, dotted with French knot coloured “flowers”. I’ve created poppies using cotton fabric, stiffened with Aleenes fabric stiffener, stitched in the centre with dozens of black French knots. I really hope you all like it.

Fishy Art

I love fish, more specifically aquarium fish, so after my last projects all being floral, I thought my next would be animals.

I found the orange crystal organza and knew exactly what I was going to do, it was made for being the fins of a goldfish, so after sketching out the fish I started the crewel work.

Using paintbox cotton threads and loads of short stitches this is the final piece, as you can see the organza really did need to be fins, in my opinion it looks stunning. I am considering turning this into a kit, would you be interested?