Libsyn Directory

Tanya Bentham : What is Opus Anglicanum embroidery?

Release Date: 06/16/2021

Owen Kelly: A Creative Storyteller With Distinctive Hand Stitched Style

Stitchery Stories

In this episode, host Susan Weeks sits down with Owen Kelly, a fifth-generation stitcher with over 50 years of experience. Working from his remote home on the SW coast of Ireland, and inspired by the natural beauty of the wild Atlantic coast, Owen shares his colourful creative journey—from traditional family techniques to his innovative “flow stitching” and narrative-inspired projects. Known for his playful globe-trotting character Seamus O'Comanssy, and his ever-evolving quilt project, Owen reveals how he blends art, storytelling, and textile heritage to create pieces that are as...

Sally McCollin: Inspiring Creativity Through Textiles, Teaching and Online Embroidery Courses

Stitchery Stories

In this Stitchery Stories episode, host Susan Weeks chats with Sally McCollin, a textile artist, designer, and educator with a fascinating career spanning publishing, design, and teaching. From early beginnings knitting mohair jumpers for pocket money to working with major craft companies like Patons & Baldwins (now Coats Crafts), Sally has had an incredible journey in the textile industry. She shares insights into her commercial design work, editorial roles, teaching, and her passion for inspiring others through online embroidery courses, and textile art courses. Key Talking Points: From...

Elizabeth Ashdown: Passementerie Artist Transforming An Endangered Craft

Stitchery Stories

Elizabeth Ashdown is one of only 4 hand Passementerie artists working in the UK today. She combines traditional and endangered craft skills with a contemporary aesthetic to create innovative passementerie. In this episode of Stitchery Stories textile art podcast, Susan Weeks chats with Elizabeth Ashdown, for a glimpse into the world of hand woven passementerie. She makes and weaves bespoke trimmings, braids, tassels, fringes, and more. Her work spans interior design, fashion, and fine art, and she is passionate about reviving and sustaining this traditional craft. Elizabeth shares her...

Ailish Henderson: Bringing Fine Art Narrative Textiles To Life

Stitchery Stories

Ailish Henderson is a fine art textile artist, particularly known for her fine art stitched collage works, which focus on capturing a fleeting moment, telling the story with mixed media, paint, stitch and fabric snippets. She is also the author of 'Narrative Textiles', published by Batsford in October 2024. In this episode, of Stitchery Stories textile art podcast, host Susan Weeks chats with Ailish Henderson, a narrative textile artist, author, and teacher. Ailish's work weaves together memory, storytelling, and fine art textiles, often using unique materials to create pieces that evoke...

Caroline Hyde-Brown : Weaving Plant Material Into Textile Art

Stitchery Stories

Caroline Hyde-Brown is a textile artist with a long-established career. Inspired by botanical research, she combines foraged plant material with a variety of textile art techniques to create fascinating weaves and vessels with fragile beauty. Combined with her purposeful art practice experience, Caroline shares plenty of wisdom on Stitchery Stories textile art podcast. With so many inspiring aspects to Caroline's textile art career, in this episode of Stitchery Stories we chose to focus on some unique plant-based research projects that Caroline has been involved with over the last couple of...

Elnaz Yazdani : Contemporary Textile Art With Unusual Materials

Stitchery Stories

Elnaz Yazdani creates vibrant contemporary textile art using rather unusual materials. Look closely for nails, springs, tubes, and all sorts from scrap stores. Elnaz loves working with community groups to reimagine embroidery and spark creativity. In this episode of Stitchery Stories textile art podcast, Susan Weeks chats with Elnaz Yazdani, an embroidery artist and educator who merges traditional techniques with unconventional materials. Elnaz discusses her passion for community engagement and how embroidery can connect people and elevate well-being. With a background that includes...

Jack Roberts: Freehand Machine Embroidery Fine Artist

Stitchery Stories

Dr. Jack Roberts, also known as JPR Stitch, is a fine artist specializing in freehand machine embroidery, creating stunning abstract shapes from dense, intricate webs of stitches. His art reflects the calmness and tranquility he experiences while stitching, making sewing his form of meditation. Jack shares insights into his artistic journey, current projects, and unique approaches to displaying his work. A key topic is Jack's 'quest'... seeking balance between simplicity and complexity, in his art, his practice, and in his life. Plenty of illuminating yet refreshing ideas, particularly around...

Alison Holt: Freehand Machine Embroidery Landscapes

Stitchery Stories

Alison Holt is a contemporary textile artist, teacher and author who combines silk painting and freehand machine embroidery to create beautiful landscapes and glimpses of the natural world. Alison shares how her career and art continues to evolve, as she looks for new challenges. Following new opportunities as well as ongoing marketing and visibiity of one's art are also very important, and Alison shares her experience and wisdom with us. Susan Weeks chats with Alison Holt about: A current focus on the sea, a rich source of inspiration Her current success in finding new exhibiting...

Hannah Thompson: A Transformational Year As A Creative Business

Stitchery Stories

Hannah Thompson has always loved crafting, quilting & textile art. In 2017, at a crossroads in her life, dealing with emotional & family upset, she left her corporate career and set up Stitching Kitchen. On Stitchery Stories textile art podcast, Hannah shares her story and we dive into what she describes as her transformational business year in 2023! Susan Weeks chats with Hannah Thompson about: Her love for textile art, quilting, crafting and creativity Family life and a career pushing textile creativity to the background Turning to textile art to deal with a challenging time...

Holly Jackson : Mixing modern stumpwork embroidery with mixed media : An artists journey

Stitchery Stories

Textile artist Holly Jackson shares her recent journey in developing her art career. Developing her 'sneaky' stumpwork embroidery using modern materials and mixed media, there are plenty of exciting 'firsts' to celebrate with Holly! We join Holly at the start of her first art exhibition. She shares her preparation and hopes from the show. We chat about her very interesting inspirations for her emerging body of work, and how she is developing her own 'take' on stumpwork, scaling it up, and using modern materials and mixed media to produce larger pieces, faster, yet still using hand embroidery....

More Episodes

Tanya Bentham is an expert in the style of hand embroidery known as 'Opus Anglicanum'. It is a style of embroidery that was prevalent in the 13th & 14th centuries in England. Very specific stitches are used in a specific way with specific materials and style.

Tanya shares her fascinating story of how she got started in embroidery and how the obsession with Opus Anglicanum started.

It may sound dull that Tanya takes her inspiration from Medieval manuscripts. Far from it! Those manuscripts contain hilarious situations and crazy characters and this was an area that I wanted to dig down into with Tanya.

There is a lot of humour in her work. She also loves to take old images and put a modern twist on them, but still using relevant imagery and sticking strictly to the style and methods of the era.

Tanya has brought all that knowledge and experience together and her first book is just about to be published... exciting times!

Susan Weeks chats with Tanya about: