Category: Textiles

  • Boy Knits World

    Jake Henzler is an Australian knitter, creator of whimsical figures and colourful architecture. Inspired by the tall houses of Copenhagen and Amsterdam while on an extended stay overseas, he also has designed patterns for houses in Sydney, native trees of Australia, and The Grand Hotel, an homage to Wes Anderson’s film: The Grand Budapest Hotel.…

  • Vadim Mikhailov

    A recent news article in the New York Times drew attention to Vadim Mikhailov, a protest artist who works with textiles. Repurposing cloth, carpets, costume and the like has long been the stock-in-trade of those who protest against what they perceive as injustice: Brazilian-Swiss artist, Eva de Souza, for example, or Korean-born Aram Han Sifuentes…

  • The Whitby Coast Bonnets

    Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, the famous English photographer, captured images of women wearing bonnets in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Thanks to these photographs we are able to see the patterns of the cloth, the evolution of the bonnets and the very practical reasons why they became everyday wear for women working on the…

  • Make a decorated egg

    Mr X Stitch often features work by textile artist, Christine Cunningham, and here is a post about making a decorated textile egg for the season.

  • Easter and the bonnet

    In your Easter bonnet with all the frills upon it,You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade. In 1917 Irving Berlin wrote “Smile and Show Your Dimple”, a melody that would, 16 years later, become “Easter Parade”, with those opening lines. In 1948 Judy Garland and Fred Astaire were the stars of a film…

  • Winter workshops

    This winter the studio will be busy with classes and workshops. On Sunday 24th May we are going to be looking at twills, those fascinating structures that we are familiar with from the diagonal lines in denim. Twills are used in houndstooth, in diamonds, in triangles and many other patterns. The 13th June is a…

  • CTANZ symposium 2026

    The Costume and Textiles Aotearoa New Zealand’s symposium is open for registrations. Each year this event draws lovers of textiles and costumes together to share a weekend of exploration and enthusiasms. This year the symposium is in New Zealand’s only City of Design, a UNESCO designation: Whanganui. Registration for symposium is now open. Join us…

  • Threads of Heritage

    A new short film from Zimbabwe brings together fashion, storytelling, and an iconic printed fabric. Pfeka is a clothing brand from Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe. The brand came up with the Masvingo print, a cloth that was inspired by Great Zimbabwe‘s massive stone ruins with its chevron and herringbone patterns. Now the print has,…

  • It’s barkcloth…

    Barkcloth is probably familiar to most readers of the blog but maybe not these textiles. Barkcloth is made by pounding inner tree bark over a hard surface until the fibres mesh together. Across the globe barkcloth is produced in this way and the studio collection has examples from Africa and the Pacific. This map shows…

  • Chiharu Shiota

    The Japanese artist, Chiharu Shiota, was born in Osaka, lives in Berlin and exhibits her astonishing artworks around the world. Shiota, often inspired by something that has happened to her, uses woollen thread to engulf, hide, reveal and explore objects and spaces, creating massive artworks of tangled yarn. These works are simultaneously fragile and strong,…