Textile Portraits


Book Description

A creative and beautiful book packed with inspiring ideas to help you capture likenesses and explore personalities in stitch, from a well-loved textile artist. Anne Kelly’s evocative and nostalgic work often incorporates portraits—of friends, family, historical figures, and even pets. Within these pages she shares her approach to textile portraiture, bringing in a wealth of different embroidery techniques, including hand and machine embroidery, quilting, and appliqué, to render in cloth the nuances of facial expressions and the personalities of her subjects. The book covers: Selfies at Home: making the perfect self-portrait in cloth. Representation and Culture: how portraits have been used in textile art for cultural expression around the world. Stylized Imagery: going beyond the traditional portrait into abstraction. Place and Time: creating a sense of place with portraiture, sometimes incorporating photographs. Story and Text: how to create a fuller narrative with deeply personal ephemera and related imagery. Pet Projects: immortalizing your pets in your textile work. Beautifully illustrated with stunning examples of her own work and that of intriguing textile artists who specialize in portraiture from around the world, this is the ideal book for embroiderers and textile artists who want to introduce this often tricky subject area into their work.




Textile Portraits


Book Description

A creative and beautiful book packed with inspiring ideas to help you capture likenesses and explore personalities in stitch, from a well-loved textile artist. Anne Kelly's evocative and nostalgic work often incorporates portraits – of friends, family, historical figures and even pets. Within these pages she shares her approach to textile portraiture, bringing in a wealth of different embroidery techniques, including hand and machine embroidery, quilting and appliqué, to render in cloth the nuances of facial expressions and the personalities of her subjects. The book covers: • Selfies at Home: making the perfect self-portrait in cloth. • Representation and Culture: how portraits have been used in textile art for cultural expression around the world. • Stylized Imagery: going beyond the traditional portrait into abstraction. • Place and Time: creating a sense of place with portraiture, sometimes incorporating photographs. • Narratives: how to create a fuller story using deeply personal ephemera and related imagery. • Pet Projects: immortalising your pets in your textile work. Beautifully illustrated with stunning examples of her own work and that of intriguing textile artists who specialise in portraiture from around the world, this is the ideal book for embroiderers and textile artists who want to introduce this often tricky subject area into their work.




It's All About the Face


Book Description

How do you "Quilt a Face?" How do you bring your favorite people to life with fabric? Fabric portrait artists and teachers, Phyllis Cullen and Cindy Richard, show you how to create amazing, true-to-life portraits! "It's All About the Face" was born when the authors realized there was little available instruction about how to quilt faces. Having taught the subject for years, they decided to collaborate. Capturing the essence of a subject is the goal. Phyllis and Cindy have applied the rules of fine art to quilting faces. The book offers in-depth direction - even if you cannot draw, have never taken an art class or even a sewing class. Using large, full color, detailed images as examples, the authors lead the reader step by step through the process of: - Composing a portrait so it tells a story and WOWS the viewer - Using digital technology to reveal the values in every face - Selecting fabrics - Creating a totally recognizable fabric collage - Quilting your masterpiece by following anatomical contours The authors offer tips about lighting, taking reference photos, and photographing your finished quilts. They make recommendations about needles, thread, surface design, and even how to please the judges! Finally, Phyllis, who is also a doctor, touches on ways to keep your hands healthy. Cindy and Phyllis want you to succeed! They offer classes and workshops to support the book and stand ready to answer your questions and help you with your projects. They feel confident that anyone who follows their instructions will get a great start on the fascinating journey that is "All About the Face!"




Gio Swaby


Book Description

Accompanied by a traveling exhibition, this book on the Bahamian artist’s textile portraits serves as a love letter to Black women: their style, strength, vulnerabilities, and beauty. This debut of the 29-year-old Bahamian-born artist aims to redefine the often-politicized Black body, with portraits made in a range of textile-based techniques, such as embroidery and appliqué, celebrating Black women. Gio Swaby’s intimate portraits are unique, highly personal figurative works made from an array of colorful fabrics and intricate, freehand lines of thread on canvas that explore the intersections of Blackness and womanhood. Illustrated with 80 works in full color that span from 2017 to 2021, this is the first book on this contemporary feminist artist who is a rising star in the world of textiles and portraiture. According to Swaby, “I wanted to create a space where we could see ourselves reflected in a moment of joy, celebrated without expectations, without connected stereotypes.” Writers and scholars with multiple points of view take on Swaby’s work and delve into her place within contemporary Black art.




Bisa Butler


Book Description

A beautifully illustrated look at the work of one of today’s most unique and exciting artists Bisa Butler (b. 1973) is an American artist who creates arresting and psychologically nuanced portraits composed entirely of vibrantly colored and patterned fabrics that she cuts, layers, and stitches together. Often depicting scenes from African American life and history, Butler invites viewers to invest in the lives of the people she represents while simultaneously expanding art-historical narratives about American quiltmaking. Situating her interdisciplinary work within the broader history of textiles, photography, and contemporary art, contributions by a group of scholars—and entries by the artist herself—illuminate Butler’s approach to color, use of African-print fabrics, and wide-ranging sources of inspiration. Offering an in-depth exploration of one of America's most innovative contemporary artists, this volume will serve as a primary resource that both introduces Butler’s work and establishes a scholarly foundation for future research.




Pet Portrait Embroidery


Book Description

Learn the art of thread painting from Instagram sensation Michelle Staub Cats and dogs seem to always have a paw planted firmly in our hearts. Capture the life in their eyes and the texture of their fur with a unique embroidered pet portrait! Insta-famous artist Michelle Staub puts a modern spin on thread painting with her easy-to-learn approach. Get started with 4 basic embroidery stitches, and follow the detailed tutorials to hone your skills. Capture awe-inspiring details of your pet with lessons in full-color thread painting or go clean with a simple line drawing—the choice is yours. Learn to personalize your art piece with names, dates, and decorative accents. With 20 sample patterns to customize, you can easily recreate any breed! Paint stunningly realistic pet portraits with just a needle and thread Try your hand at two styles—minimal outlines and incredible full-color renderings Make it modern with floral garlands, personalized banners, and crisp lettering Start today with 4 easy stitches and 20 customizable projects




How to SEW ART!


Book Description

It's Easy To Sew Art When You Know The Simple Secrets! In this book you will find the inspiring story of how I became an artist and I'll teach you the easy way to become an artist too. I will teach you my award winning Contoured Pixel Technique. You will master the Core Concepts that make sewing art easy. Follow me and you'll be making fine art with a sewing machine and ordinary fabrics (easily found at any fabric store) very quickly. The diagrams and instructions make this modern quilting process so easy to understand that even a beginner can do it! Each book comes with a free online video course to guide you. The Techniques Are Easy! Read This Book And Learn: How to choose the perfect image! How to make your fabric look like paint! How to use thread like it's a paint brush!




Textile Travels


Book Description

An evocative exploration of how travel - local and far away - can inform, inspire and enhance textile art. Travel has always featured heavily in textile art, from artists’ ‘travelling sketchbooks’ to large-scale installations mapping coastal erosion or the effects of climate change. In this book, renowned textile artist Anne Kelly shows how to capture your travels, past and present, in stitch, with practical techniques sitting alongside inspiring images. She begins the book by discussing maps in textile art, including their iconography as well as incorporating actual maps into textile work. She then goes on to explore the influence of different cultures from across the globe on textile art. From India and Peru to Scotland and Scandinavia, the book shows how to harness traditional techniques, fabrics, motifs and colours for use in your own work. The chapter ‘Stopping Places’ captures the moments in time on a journey that can be distilled, remembered and documented to create stitched postcards, sketchbooks and other pieces. The final chapter, ‘Space and the Imagination’, explores the possibilities of space travel as a source of inspiration, and covers inner space too, with artists mapping their own emotional journeys. Including a wealth of practical tricks and techniques as well as exquisite photography of both Anne’s own work and that of other leading textile artists, this fascinating book will inspire all textile artists, embroiderers and makers to use past travels to influence their work.




Much Loved


Book Description

Award-winning photographer Mark Nixon has created a trove of quirky and nostalgic portraits of teddy bears and other stuffed animals that have been lovingly abused after years of play. MuchLoved collects 60 of these images along with their accompanying background tales. An exhibit in the photographer’s studio led to a small sensation on the Internet when a few of the pictures circulated unofficially on scores of blogs and on many legitimate news sites. Viewers have been intrigued by the funny, bittersweet images and their ironic juxtaposition of childhood innocence and aged, loving wear and tear. When you see these teddy bears and bunnies with missing noses and undone stuffing, you can’t help but think back to childhood and its earliest companions who asked for nothing and gave a lot back. Praise for Much Loved: “Much Loved is impossibly endearing in its entirety.” —Brain Pickings




Textile Nature


Book Description

An inspirational guide to using nature in textile art, with step-by-step projects Plants, flowers, gardens, insects and birds are a rich source of inspiration for artists and designers of all kinds. This beautiful guide demonstrates how to get the most out of your surroundings to create original and unique pieces in textiles. Beginning with a chapter on drawing from nature, the book demonstrates how to use sketchbooks and create mood boards to explore your local environment and landscape. The author demonstrates how to make small pieces such as folding books based on observational drawing and stitch. Moving on to a section on floral inspiration, the author shows how to use plants and flowers in your work, from using stencilled flower motifs as embellishment to printing with plants onto fabric and making simple relief prints. Finally, the taking flight chapter demonstrates how to move into three-dimensions and sculptural work with birds and insects made from cloth. Featuring step-by-step projects as well as work from contemporary artists, makers and collaborative groups throughout, this practical and beautiful guide shows how practitioners of all kinds can draw from the natural world for making and inspiration.