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Textile archives: Inspiring the makers of tomorrow

Andrea Aranow has had a lifelong passion for textiles. In the 1970s and 80s she travelled to Peru, China, and Japan, collecting garments and swatches and selling her collections to world-renown museums. In 1987 Aranow came to New York and set up a small studio ...

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Why the ‘I hope it works’ approach to creativity doesn’t work!

And how a system can sustain your process I hope it works! I hope this piece is the one! I hope my personal visual identity will emerge this time! Isn’t hope marvellous? It’s that thing that gets you fired up at the inception of a new idea. The anticipatio ...

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Louise O’Hara: Evoking memories

Louise O’Hara is a professional mixed media artist. Her work explores the richness of light, the colour and the texture that she sees around. Often focusing on rugged northern landscapes with brooding skies and lighter coastal scenes that are based on t ...

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Paulina Ortiz: Art that inspires

Paulina Ortiz is an artist, designer, and president of the Ibero-American Textile Network. She received a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the California College of the Arts and is currently working as Professor of Textile Art and Design at the National ...

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Textile art sampling 101

I don’t like buying shoes online. That may seem like a bizarre way to open an article about textile art but stick with me. Looking at pictures on a website, you can get a pretty good idea of the tone of the leather, the height of the heel, the detail ...

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Could sampling be your creative super power?

Are you one of those textile artists who has constant creative epiphanies? When one artwork is complete, the muse magically appears to deliver a fully formed concept or design for the next. And does that ‘divine intervention’ stay strong and true as you sa ...

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Ann Brauer: Tool kit

Ann Brauer has been combining the traditions of quilt making and contemporary concepts of art to create her abstract landscapes for the last 34 years. In this article, Ann selects 5 tools that she uses to make her beautiful designs. We learn about their place ...

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Why lack of clarity is destroying your creative confidence

This is the story of Janie. Janie has just celebrated her 57th birthday. She’s an ‘aspiring’ textile artist. ‘Aspiring’ because she tends to ‘look’ rather than ‘do’. She spends hours browsing textile art online and ends up b ...

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The artistic power of appliqué

appliqué  |əˈpliːkeɪ| noun decorative work in which one piece of cloth is sewn or fixed onto another What do you think when you hear the word ‘appliqué’? The dictionary definition doesn’t quite do it for me. I guess, in the most basic ...

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Judy Merchant: Tool kit

Judy trained in Textiles and Fine Art at Canterbury College of Art in the 60s and 70s and after qualifying as an art teacher, her career took her away from her art practice. Ten years ago she returned to developing her own work and has exhibited regularly ever ...

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