What I’ve been up to this year…

There’s been a bit less quilting action here over the past year as I’ve been doing a foundation textiles course at Morley College, London. The course covers various techniques in textile making and manipulation and focuses on developing research skills and critical thinking. I was very interested in furthering my sewing skills and taking my creative practice in new directions and also keen to meet some new like-minded textiley type folks. This course is exactly what I was looking for!

I’ve been very happy to delve into all the classes including screen printing, machine knitting and conceptual headwear. I’m looking forward to transferring much of the techniques I’ve learned back into my quilts and see what happens. We are currently working on our final projects, I’ve been researching quilts as sculpture. The work will be exhibited in the college gallery at the end of June. I’ll post an update near the time.

These are a few images of what I’ve been up to…..

Sublimation dye ink and dye paper

Fabric manipulation and felting

Sublimation dying sample

Backstrap loom weaving - mine is on the right featuring wooden cutlery and earbuds

Contrasting hand-stitch work

Conceptual Headwear - a squashed mini shirt and dots!

Screen printing development

Textile sample for my final project - results in a few weeks!

The results of our screen printing project - including foil and flocking

Comments

Listen! Seamside with Zak Foster

I had a thoughtful conversation recently with the brilliant quilter, artist and community builder Zak Foster for his Seamside podcast. I’ve always loved Seamside for Zak’s insightful chats with a range of textile talent from around the globe, discovering want inspires other artists and how they see the world and their creative space within it. Have a listen at zakfoster.com , the page includes show notes with images of my quilts we discuss.

Listen! My Breaking the Blocks episode is here…

Here’s the full recording of my chat with Rachel CraftyMonkies on her Breaking The Blocks podcast. I hope you enjoy 😊

Morley College Textiles Foundation End of Year Show

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.

Russell Barratt

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