Book

More birds in Skirts

| janethaigh

The last week of my exhibition Inspired to Stitch at Hidcote Gardens and this week ,taking stock of the whole experience, I find myself reflecting on, amongst other things, what sells and why. My small prints of the Birds in Skirts are still selling well and in a few weeks will be winging (sorry) their way to their new owners.

But it is often the case that the works I have most affection for (or would like to keep for myself) often do not sell immediately. I am particularly fond of the 2 larger A3 prints with the crazy patchwork skirts. I designed and made these fabrics for my first ever book, Crazy Patchwork, published by Collins and Brown in 1998. These 2 pieces were made into lampshades – yes that’s right, I made crazy lampshades – so I unpicked them from the shade shapes and used the still pristine patchworks for the large skirts.

IF I was buying from this collection, I would choose the lovely old white fabric designs chosen from my collection of vintage fabrics; strips of hand embroidered tape lace, Broderie Anglaise and crochet braids and ribbons that I have lovingly hand stitched together. But not one has been ordered – hey ho! obviously have been overlooked by the more colourful iterations or maybe it is the lack of the pastel skies?

But the Beribboned birds, below, made with the more modern and beautiful coloured ribbons by Renaissance Ribbons are still available….so what do I know?

And my very first versions of designing and stitching the complicated Jacobean embroidery techniques, that took so long to research and develop, have still to find a new home – Hey Ho! But does any designer ever know what will be the most desirable objects of all their creations?

And here is my latest version of the birds, it does not appear in the exhibition but is the result of a swift video made for instagram showing how I made this woven version….maybe there will be more to come as I have recently accepted a commission for one as a special birthday present…..

birds in skirts

| janethaigh

I gasped when I first saw these 2 topiary birds when visiting Hidcote to discuss my exhibition “Inspired to Stitch” for the Manor House gallery in 2025, where were the large bases of yew that they had perched upon for over 100 years?

Hidcote then
Hidcote Now

It was explained that the loss is in part due to necessary pruning( after the covid closures) needed to maintain access to the steps to the pool. Now they sit on top of bare but beautifully dappled trunks. I immediately thought “I can mend them”, visually of course! My idea was to create 2 wide ‘skirts’ of different fabrics – but when I started to think about making skirts my mind started to race with ideas. I quickly scribbled some down onto the only scrap of paper I had to hand…..

I decided to make small drawings of the 2 birds and then I could dress them both in a fabric skirt. Now how make this look feasible in reality. Using Inktense pigment crayons A4 sketchbook paper I roughed out the basic hedge shapes, but I had so many different ideas when I looked at my vintage fabrics scraps, that I decided to make a 2 sets of giclee prints, in order to illustrate all my ideas.

Above, the 2 giclee prints developed from the original drawings from my photographs, the first design was for a lattice or Jacobean Laid Work (see below the samples on the rough drawings).

The first skirt sample was stitched straight into a bird print, using a fine twisted cotton thread. When beginning any new project, I always attempt a challenging piece of ‘inspirational’ work, by which I mean it will make me want to carry on with all my new ideas.

Above is the first design I completed for a whole set of 22 ‘Birds in Skirts” and I made them especially to sell at my ‘Inspired to Stitch’ exhibition This is an unusual step for me as I very seldom sell my stitched works. So now they have all been mounted, framed and glazed ready to be delivered to the buyers after the Exhibition closes.

There will be more posts about these stitched prints, as this is a new and exciting way for me to work. It combines my love of drawing and stitching and opportunities to develop many variations using my collection of vintage fabrics. I am now conducting new classes to cover some of the ideas and new-to-me techniques that I developed for creating the Birds in Skirts edition

DRAWN to stitch: gardens & flowers

| janethaigh

This is the foreword, kindly composed by Kaffe Fassett, for the first page of my latest book I made as a catalogue/ picturebook to accompany my latest exhibition Inspired to Stitch: Hidcote Revisited. at Hidcote gardens in Gloucestershire.

It illustrates part of the story of my career in stitched textiles, from my first ever embroidered picture above, made out of the sheer frustration of working in the fast-track commercial fashion industry in London, after I left Liverpool Art College in 1970. And it is an imagined garden.

Fast forward several years to 1992 (you will have to buy the book for more information)and I am totally committed to all things flowers, gardens and topiary! Here are several pages from the book to whet your appetite and first here is Flora, the Roman goddess of Flowers.

Flora is the central image of 9 embroideries called ‘The Flora’ that tells a visual history of the development of, what I now think of as, “designer flowers”.

The Auricula Theatre above, with a series of small giclee prints I developed from the original silk embroidery. The protective curtains are made from a piece of vintage Spitalfields silk.

Pansy Faces and my drawings for the inventions I imagined as my exhibit in our town’s annual flower show.

A personification of Blodeuwedd, or “Flower Face” from Welsh folk lore; this is a giclee print of the original stitched silk collage on paper, that I developed from my old drawings made for ‘The Flora’ .

Here is a bouquet of hand embroidered flowers in ‘After Winifred’. I was given this bouquet during Covid, by a masked friend, in my garden, on my birthday. I was looking back though my Flora drawings to make some joyful embroideries and had bought a book of flower paintings by Winifred Nicholson……

I keep a careful record of all my research drawings, this results in a whole range of different drawings, samples, notes and photographs being kept for further inspiration. Here are typical ways that I use these ideas and studies for new works. Above are some pieces of ‘The Enamel Garden‘ a major academic research project into using textile techniques for other materials, here vitreous enamel on hand cut sheet copper. It is possible to trace how I used my research drawings to create these flowers and hedges.

And my latest canvas work design for Ehrman Tapestry, a version of the Vintage Topiary Bird used for the front cover of the book. I designed this especially for the company to make a kit of this design to celebrate the exhibition…. I will keep the post about making it until later.

And at last I am selling the book from my Shopify site ( QR code below). Above is the flyer for the Hidcote exhibition that gives access to more information into to all the works contained in the book. But best of all in the first week of the show, my first package of books and a giclee print ready to be posted.