Throughout the history of textiles, of cloth making and all the needle arts and crafts, change has been constant, and until recently was all about cultural and technological change affecting the natural fibres produced by animals and plants that man processed for use in all those crafts. If this interests you I recommend the extraordinary website https://hapticandhue.com/about/ with heaps of reading and excellent podcasts presented by weaver Jo Andrews and several experts in their textile fields. While writing this post I checked on when man-made fibres appeared, and found this interesting summary – https://www.andy-kirkpatrick.com/articles/view/a_short_history_of_man_made_fabrics In 1885 the first fibre made from cellulose fibre was exhibited in London UK, and by 1899 it was being produced commercially in France. Since WWII in man-made fibres have exploded in use for many practical reasons, including being cheaper than natural fibres to produce, and being often stronger or more durable. There will be nothing like zero fossil fuel usage in the future of Man – they are a key element in textiles as well as being vital to apparently 6000+ applications vital to living and saving lives in the world’s 9 billion population..
I am so grateful for today’s digital technology through which the internet apps like Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram et al, and artists’ own websites, give instant access to the work of many fibreartists around the world. Fifty years ago when I became really interested in fibreart as an art form, it was much harder to keep up with developments as they were happening. After marrying in 1969, because of Mike’s work we lived for nearly two decades in remote, isolated areas and mining towns (Kalgoorlie, Darwin, Katherine, Mt.Isa) While they all had lively arts communities, each was a small world, and most of us had only occasional access to real time exhibitions in ‘the Big Smoke’. To get an idea of who was being inspired by what to create their fibreart, we all depended on print – exhibition catalogues, books, subscription magazines, and whatever could be obtained through town libraries; and in those places visiting workshop teachers were always a welcome treat. Since 1987 we’ve lived in cities (Denver, Perth, Montevideo) where it is great to be able to visit exhibitions in person.
Since medieval times, all the broad craft categories were backed by guilds of qualified master crafstmen, so there were guilds of spinners, weavers, lacemakers, dyers, metal workers, carpenters, potters, wood carvers, woodworkers, stone masons, and many more crafts. Most of those crafts were also carried out on domestic/nonprofessional levels, of course, and when I began stitching, ‘the crafts’ were still separated out like this, both in perception and reality. The whole process was considered to be making ‘craft’ anyway, as it was mostly from domestic settings and with a utility purpose. Mum smocked little dresses for us, made very fine crocheted table mats and runners for the antique dining table, and worked canvas needlepoint designs for chair covers and framing. One was mounted on the panel on a firescreen produced by Dad’s best mate, Uncle Bill, who was a furniture manufacturer. Needlework, knitting, lacemaking and crochet skills were principally handed on down through parents and other female relatives, although I know in 1945 my newly married mother aged 20, attended evening classes at the local tech college to learn basic home sewing and dressmaking which she hadn’t learned earlier, largely due to the social disruption in WWII (she also attended cooking classes, and became excellent at both) People knitted or crocheted wool or other threads; others spun and wove wall hangings of wool or linen, people made baskets of plant fibre from stems and leaves; embroiderers decorated things with hand stitch (machine embroidery was mostly used for company logos and names on clothing, hotel and hospital linens etc.) Quilters cut and pieced fabrics or stitched applique piece onto a fabric to produce a surface design before quilting the layers, and either way, they were ‘quilters’. Most craft makers were and still are grouped or described by the techniques used, and we still join established guilds and clubs as well as informal groups based around those particular crafts. Even as I write this, in a few hours’ time I’ll be talking over Zoom with a group of stitchers who formed initially, during the pandemic, under the auspices of StitchClub in 2022. We ‘meet’ fortnightly, and though we’re scattered between UK, USA and Canada and Uruguay, we’re as close as any group I’ve ever belonged to, like the Over The Edge Quilters (Denver) or Goldfingers Embroiderers (Kalgoorlie WA) and the internet makes it all possible – yay!
Which brings me to Studio Art Quilt Associates, SAQA When I joined soon after it formed, the internet was still new, and promotional publicity comprised albums of slides sent out to galleries which SAQA hoped to interest in exhibitions of quilted 2D fibreart, fairly newly beng recognised as ‘art quilts’ about which the organisation has always worked to educate the public. For several years now, SAQA has included quilted 3D objects, too, and has a dedicated special interest group for members interested in making 3D works, Back in August I was invited to talk to that group about the 3D creations I’d occasionally made in my fibreart career. In 1978 I was fortunate to travel from Mt Isa, Queensland, down to Goolwa, South Australia, for a 9-day summer school, which was fabulous, and I can’t overstate how influential that experience continues to be. For example, I was introduced to soft sculpture. A 2020 StitchClub workshop with Clarissa Calleson really revived my interest in stuffed fabric forms including suffolk puffs, and in 2024 and 2025 I made some in works selected for the first and second exhibitons of Glass+Textile here in UY.
Now I’m currrently pursuing stuffed puffs, as discussed in recent posts here and here. Where this will lead I’m not sure, but several commitments are looming, so I’ll be giving them a rest until well into January, and who knows what could develop over that time?