An Apothacary of Art - To soothe your soul

Ravenous Butterflies

Batsford

I will openly admit that I had never heard of Ravenous Butterflies until I received this book. We get used to book titles and authors, yet this name instead of an authors intrigued me.

Personal thoughts surround her honest first person narrative throughout. She is not perfect, she has not had a perfect life, yet she has found her imperfect yet golden ‘place’ as it were. She does not give us a filtered view, or at least she endeavours not to, I of course and all you future readers do not know the real life this book character worthy pixie leads; she admits to anxiety, to needing to change and create the life she is now living.

Within this title, Seton sets out a personal, truistic and relatable narrative, evoking completive rumination on what our own garden room can mean to us - what stories have we already created or can create in the future? What warm memories do we own of family past and present, nature finds and nature owned, who have all resided within this creative masterpiece?

Contemporary Applique

Julia Triston and Rachel Lombard

Batsford

If you had told my sixteen year old self that I would be sitting down, reading a book specifically on a method I had just learned - I would have let our a rebellious laugh. I was no stitcher, yet on this virgin stitching experience, Triston had unknowingly to me at the time, worked her stitchery magic.

Exuberance An Embroiderer's Perspective

Edited by Carol Cooke and Sharon Peoples

What did you get up to during the COVID19 lockdown? Many of us turned to one of three things, banana bread, hobbies or nature.

The Embroidery Stitch Companion

Coline Bavois

Search Press

This simple little book is an ideal turn to for anyone who wants to either learn stitch types or who need to refresh their memories. I know when I go back to teaching the embroidery basics to students, I often need to remind myself how to do certain stitches. So this book is ideal.

Forage & Stitch - Using natural materials in textile art

Written by Caroline Hyde-Brown

Search Press

‘Nature is my safe space’ - Caroline Hyde-Brown

The above opening words of this book drew me to its author immediately. As a fellow artist, I too have tasted the healing power that a walk in the outside world can provide. This artist has chosen a niche area to really hone in on, the idea of exploring…..with a point.

Kneelers: The unsung Folk Art of England and Wales

Elizabeth Bingham

Published by Chatto & Windus

Mind burned by all the usual titles, mass produced by the usual publishers, maybe you are looking for something new or that little bit different.

Mandell’s anthology here reveals how fabric can be more than fibres. It can strengthen our human times, our social complexities. This title is not directed at a homey cosy audience, it craves the thoughtful, the engaged citizens we can all become if we so desire. I will put it this way, a needle and thread will never be simply observed by you the reader as cold silver and floss again.

Couffe shows how this method can be practical and of use, with many hood bound samples and also some gift related pieces, such as purses and mobile phone cases.

Of mind or matter, mending a mind, mending a material….now more than ever, we all yearn for more vital forms of repair than finding a hole in ones’ sock and locating a way of patching it together again. It isn’t just our visual outerwear which needs cared for - it begins inside. We now live within a society of mental health matters, of a relieving openness surrounding those formally uttered in ‘whisperic’ (yes I have just made that one up) tones. Within this title, Smith connects the requirement for inner repair to the outer repairs which are textile art inclined.

Textures from Nature in Textile Art: Natural inspiration for mixed-media and textile artists

Written by Marian Jazmik

Published by Batsford

This is her first published title. As an artist her focus seems to be on incorporating mixed media with her embroidery offerings. We will come across such methods as using heat distressing to develop highly fruitful textures, how to focus on details from nature to inspire our art, heat guns, soldering irons, dyeing…..the list goes on.

Simplistic pleasure can be found via the act of a stitch. This lesson is one Smith endorses within the pages of this title. Slow stitch as a term has become ever fashionable. I know myself as a tutor, the classes most sought after are those with a mindfulness edge. I hear of lunch hour art classes, small caplets of time snatched together in a pledge for a better work setting and frame of mind.

Textiles Transformed: Thread and thrift with reclaimed textiles by Mandy Pattullo explains that we don’t have to look far to be inspired, and that vintage materials and techniques can be combined to create treasured timeless pieces….

How Art Heals: Exploring Your Deep Feelings Using Collage, authored by Andra F Stanton forward authored by Tien Chiu

As a practicing artist myself, I specialise in the practice of repair via making. So this book in title and thematic matter was tempting. Often we run away from emotions, grief is to be quietly subtle, broken….we don’t admit. Yet what if we were allowed to discuss it? Art should be a part of our lives.

Hand Stitched Quilts, authored by Carolyn Forster published by Search Press

It has become a fashion within the arts to take things at a slower pace, enjoying the moment, smelling the roses as it were. Yet on a personal level, I had never before connected this “skill” of the pace with the technique of quilt making. Yet Forster has isolated this niche within her title.

Does even the title ‘dressmaking’ scare you? As an artist and practitioner in the textiles field, it still has that affect on me. It seems unapproachable, too mathematical a skill to teach my messy artistic brain. Yet within this Search Press title, Helen the author pieces together all the information we need to know and filters out what we don’t.

Moments matter, don’t let them scatter.

It shouldn’t have taken us as humans a worldwide pandemic to stop and smell the roses as it were; yet lets’ face it, it did.

Everyday. As a word, we judge it as ordinary, mundane, dare I say it: Boring, without any magic.

Holmes, within this title sets herself up to turn our provisional definition of the ordinary around. I stake you not to leave this book without promising to yourself not to lack appreciation for our wonderful world again.

First thoughts? I felt out of my depth, the front cover shows a sample of perfectly placed, shaded stitches, forming a few nature posed motifs. I am an embroiderer, however I enjoy creating my ‘version’ of events. This seemed in binary opposition to my own practice….how could I aspire to this neat world? Yet I looked within, and now deem this to be more than a traditional fixed title, let me explain.

A Fine Tradition 2, More Embroidery by Margaret Light

Published by Search Press

This book is the second offering from Light on this subject matter. On first glance from the covers perspective (I am afraid I missed the first published title) I thought: ‘Lovely but very traditional’. This can be read as a negative, a book for only the walk the line embroiderers.