Stitched Textiles: Nature - A Book Review

Well it certainly has been a long time since I have been here - where does the time go?  I have not been sitting idle it's just most of the day to day things get posted to Instagram and then I run out of hours in the day to write a blog post .... sound familiar? 

A recent fun day out was to the Handmade Fair at Ragley Hall.  I had the pleasure of meeting Stephanie Redfern and seeing her gorgeous work and so I am delighted to have got my hands on her book Stitched Textiles: Nature, which was released in April by Search Press.

The book covers the materials Stephanie uses in her work, which she describes as textile- and mixed-media-based, design and inspiration and process and practice.  Having been drawn into her stand at the Fair by her wonderful appliqued art it has been great to read about how she goes about the process of creating a piece.  I do not come from an art background and so I am always interested in how other people create especially with paints and printing.

The chapter Themes contains more inspiration ideas and design advice and step by step projects.  I haven't had the time to get started on one of these yet but have decided that it will be a summer project with my daughter once the summer holidays have started.

In summary, I think this book has a great balance between detailed how to and more general design  information which could lead you down your own path to creating truly unique textile art.  I have been really inspired to seek out natural images from when we lived in New Zealand and to begin to use them in some art pieces.  It may be some time before they appear so don't hold your breath!

If you are interested in finding out more about Stephanie's work she is running a two day workshop at the RBSA in Birmingham at the end of August - sadly I am already busy that weekend otherwise I would have signed up straight away!