“You need life experience and stories before you can make meaningful art.” Suzette’s opening to her talk explains her approach to embroidery. She showed us a collection of her lovely and detailed collaged pieces – some on a large (tablecloth-sized) scale – which illustrate her own stories and include important elements from her life. These include the belted Galloway cattle (seen at the bottom of this quilt) from her time growing up on a farm, pet ferrets, trees, plants and birds encountered along the way.
Long walks, such as along Offa’s Dyke, are narrated in image and stitch.
Suzette uses mainly repurposed fabrics for quilts/hangings, as well as transfer printed images, and she’s willing to re-work pieces that she feels don’t quite hit the mark: “If you aren’t happy with a piece, cut it up and reassemble it.” (Great advice.) Folded textile books are also a feature of Suzette’s work, and she often includes details in pockets and ‘windows’, as here:
In our Saturday workshop Suzette showed us a really simple technique for transferring images to fabric. The only tricky part was to remember which way up to place the images!
Here’s our collection of transferred images (thanks to Suzette for the resources) produced during the day, ready for stitching and making up our own folded books or incorporating into other work.
More info. about Suzette at: https://suzettesmart.com