NEW BOOK! by Fibrefusion - Contemporary Textile Art Group

Seed heads from Belstead gardens

This is so exciting! The textile group Fibrefusion that I belong to, has just had its 5th book published! The book ‘Muslin, a Stitched Exploration of Loose Weave Fabrics’ is an inspirational workbook using the lovely fabric Muslin throughout the book. The book can be seen and purchased from Fibrefusions website. On the website you'll as well find our 4 previously published books.
In celebration of our new book, Fibrefusion will be exhibiting from the 10th September to the 15th October at Art Van Go There amongst others, you’ll be able to see the samples and finished work shown in the book.


Belstead weekend: Muslin samples galore

Muslin, calico, scrim is such a fantastic, but also quite often an overlooked medium, which is why we chose it as the subject for our book. This past year we have had total fun working, exploring and stretching the boundaries for what can be done with Muslin and scrim. The result was an amazing amount of colourful, stunning samples many of which can be seen in our book. A big THANK YOU goes to Pauline Verrinder Fibrefusions mentor, who has done a huge, wonderful job in writing the text, keeping us honest and pulling it all together.


Belstead weekend: Fibrefusion girls at work.

In August the 16 group members met for a working weekend at Belstead house (link). We partly worked on the tying the last bits up for the book and exhibition at Art Van Go and partly on a new body of design work for upcoming exhibitions. We had a superb time and the weather was beautiful.

Belstead: Beautiful wall design

Tantalizing, Translucent and Manipulated with Pauline Verrinder

I just spend 5 fabulous days doing nothing but sewing and sewing and sewing. It was fantastic! In January I had signed up for a summer school with the yummy heading: 'Tantalizing, Translucent and Manipulated'. And was I in for a treat! The summer school took place at Cottenham Village College, North of Cambridge (GB) Our tutor was Pauline Verrinder a wonderful textile artist, international tutor and author. Did she keep us busy? OH YES!
Over the 5 days we looked at several ways of creating transparent and semi transparent backgrounds for stitch. Amongst others, we worked with cocoon strippings, different types of water soluble fabrics, laminate pouches, silk chiffon, sheers, cotton organdy and much more.


Some of the techniques I had touched base with before, but as always it was great to be reminded. I never ever mind revisiting seemingly familiar techniques. There is always so much to explore with in a technique. 'Been there done that' is not a phrase that for me applies to contemporary, free style machine embroidery. The potential for developing and pushing the boundaries even further, is always there. It is such a freedom to play, and that is probably one of the reasons, why I like this type of embroidery so much.
The amount of work that was produced during these 5 days was totally impressive. So inspirational to see the different and very individual results.