Tag: textiles

  • 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,…

  • Fire-fighting in Japan

    During the Edo Period (1600s to the mid-19th Century) Japan enjoyed peace and prosperity. This was reflected in fire-fighters’ protective clothing. Utilitarian clothes that protected the wearer while they were putting out the fires that could easily spread across the tightly-packed wooden buildings of towns and cities were an important part of a fire fighter’s…

  • All about skirts

    An exhibition in New York is all about skirts. The show,  “Wool Skirts,” is just about to finish on March 15 at Sudestada in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn, and it is a display of 130 skirts and 29 new pieces by artists and designers. These were made using 47 skirts from the collection, which…