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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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...
info_outline
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_outlineToday I explore hand embroidered and beaded pop art with contemporary pop art textile artist Sarah Gwyer.
We talk about her magpie-like 'obsession' with colourful beads and charms and the artistic path to creating beaded portraits.
But beneath the colourful sparkling beads lies strong social commentary on celebrity, wealth and consumerism, all expressed in a distinctive pop art style.
And we dive into the copyright complexities that Sarah has found herself entwined in over her desire to portray celebrities as parody.
This is such an interesting chat, and thank you to Sarah for sharing her story. And of course... we have a good old laugh in amongst the serious topics!
Susan Weeks chats with Sarah Gwyer.
For this episode... View Show Notes, Links & Examples of Sarah's work at https://stitcherystories.com/sarahgwyer
Visit: https://www.sarahgwyer.com/
Look: https://www.instagram.com/sarahgwyer
Like: https://www.facebook.com/sarahgwyerartist
Other places & people we mentioned:
The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
https://summer.royalacademy.org.uk/
Other Episodes You Might Enjoy:
https://stitcherystories.com/eleanorpigman/
https://stitcherystories.com/alexhall/
https://stitcherystories.com/claireedwards/