Russell Barratt

  As the clock struck midnight, marking the beginning of 2024, I found myself still immersed in a world of fabric, needle, and thread—a promising start to the new year! I had embarked on two special commissions, one of which has been a truly extraordinary journey. The larger commission brought me to Old Ford Primary School in Bow, East London, where I collaborated with their artist in residence, Veronica Rowlands , on an inter-generational quilt project. The inspiration? Comfort objects—those cherished items that bring solace and warmth to our lives.                          Showing the class some of my quilts for inspiration  Veronica had previously arranged with the Sunny Jar social enterprise for a fabric dyeing class using food waste and artist Milou Stella on parent/carer embroidery workshops depicting cherished memories. Veronica and I then teamed up for three classes with enthusiastic year 8 kids. Together, we guided the students in creating collages of their favorite objects,

 I was pleased to sit down with Jenny Bell, my tutor from my time on the Morley College Textiles Foundation course, to discuss my work, enjoyment of the course and what I’ve been up to since. Have a listen on the link below. https://morleyradio.co.uk/programmes/creating-textiles-ep2/  

 I’m pleased to say I have another online workshop with CraftyMonkies.com coming on Saturday 18th November. ‘Disrupting the Pattern’ will be a workshop where we look at manipulating familiar fabric to alter the printed pattern.  Here’s the blurb, This three-hour workshop is designed to inspire creativity and innovation in the art of quilting by exploring using strips of printed fabric to create unique, eye-catching patterns within a quilt block. You will have the opportunity to perhaps break free from your usual process as we encourage experimentation and help you to develop individual artistic voices. You can use any patterned or striped fabric, the more graphic the better! Printed vintage tea towels are ideal to use or a patterned fabric you bought a while ago and aren’t sure where to use it. We will first learn how to make a continuous bias binding, mixing two fabrics then use the binding as strips to machine sew into a log cabin block to throughly disrupt the original pattern. Take

 I   was beyond delighted to find out I won first prize for the newly created Sustainable Quilts category at this years Festival of Quilts! It made my trip up to Birmingham doubly special as I was already giving a talk about my ‘Lucky! Lucky! Lucky!’ quilt as part of The Quilters Guild of the British Isles. So it was a busy day taking photos, meeting the sponsor of the category, Madeira. I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed a visit to the Festival and come away inspired and fired up to make more work. It’s a wonderful opportunity to meet other quilters and folks from instagram. Roll on next year! With Heather Audin, the Quilt Curator from The Quilters Guild of the British Isles, in front of my ‘Lucky! Lucky! Lucky!’ Quilt.

  A few pictures of my final project ‘A Quilt As Sculpture’, for my textiles course at Morley College….see below for the exhibition text. A Quilt As Sculpture   I wanted to delve deeper into my quilting practice and explore the inherent qualities of a quilt and play with the functional, traditional way a quilt is made and considered. I began with the following statements to work against,   A quilt is a flat object A quilt is a soft object A quilt is a sewn whole piece A quilt usually has three layers A quilt is not seen through   An important consideration for me was to use only used or recycled fabrics.   I looked at the work of artists Caroline Broadhead, El Anatsui, Paul Hayes and traditional Mola textiles for inspiration during the making of this project.

  I’d be showing my final project for the course at the Textile Foundation Exhibition at Morley Gallery from Wednesday 28th June to Saturday 1st July (12-5pm) The private view is Tuesday 27th June 6-8pm, I hope you can pop along and say hi! Morley Gallery, 61 Westminster Bridge Road, SE1 7HT I will also be at the gallery on Wednesday 28th June 12-3ish and Friday 30th June 12-5, come and have a look at our work.