Susan Hensel : Communicating Ideas Through Digital Machine Embroidery
Release Date: 10/05/2022
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...
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Sally McCollin: Inspiring Creativity Through Textiles, Teaching and Online Embroidery Courses
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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...
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Elizabeth Ashdown: Passementerie Artist Transforming An Endangered Craft
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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...
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Ailish Henderson: Bringing Fine Art Narrative Textiles To Life
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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...
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Caroline Hyde-Brown : Weaving Plant Material Into Textile Art
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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...
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Elnaz Yazdani : Contemporary Textile Art With Unusual Materials
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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...
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Jack Roberts: Freehand Machine Embroidery Fine Artist
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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...
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Alison Holt: Freehand Machine Embroidery Landscapes
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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...
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Hannah Thompson: A Transformational Year As A Creative Business
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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...
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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....
info_outlineSusan Hensel is a multidisciplinary artist with a long-established career. She combines mixed media with digital machine embroidery to create beautiful sculptural forms flooded with colour. Alongside runs her gallery & curatative experience, giving us a fabulous guest sharing her art practice wisdom, on Stitchery Stories textile art podcast.
Art is all about communication. Creating art to interpret your thoughts, inspirations, perhaps trying to make sense of the world.
And the communication continues long after the art is finished.... you need to tell everyone about it, so they can enjoy it too. Susan has some great advice about this side of a successful art practice.
We also dive into the aspects of when you take your art career to the 'next level' of exhibitions and galleries.
Susan Weeks chats with Susan Hensel about:
Getting excited about digital machine embroidery
The frustrations of inconsistent materials
Current inspirations from climate change & weather maps
How Donald Duck's blue jacket sent her into a life-changing artistic pivot!
Using techniques & approach appropriate for the ideas you are trying to express
Evolving beyond the clay & brealing out of the rectangle
Opening a gallery as a way of meting new people
Getting media & press attention
Artist representation
Understanding the gallery business
There are artists everywhere - who have created everything we use Switching between 'business mode' and 'creative mode' can be so difficult
For this episode...
View Links, information & Examples of Susan's work at
https://stitcherystories.com/susanhensel
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Like: https://www.facebook.com/SusanHenselProjects/
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Sign up for information on Sue's 'How To Create An Online Course' which is specifically created for textile artists and other crafty business owners. Course Creation Quick Start Guide.
https://virtualityworks.com/how-do-you-create-a-course-quick-start/
Other Episodes You Might Like:
David Morrish : Disruptive Digital Embroidery
https://stitcherystories.com/davidmorrish/
Hayley Mills-Styles: Thread Artist Who Loves Digital Embroidery
https://stitcherystories.com/hayleymillsstyles/
Kathleen Laurel Sage: Shaping Machine Embroidery With Heat
https://stitcherystories.com/kathleenlaurelsage/