As explained previously, I will no longer be posting on this blog, but I am leaving it up as a record of my adventures in fibre art over the past 10 years. Thank you very much for keeping me company!
My new website is kimwinter.co.uk, with its own blog that you can subscribe to, so do pop over there if you want to see where the next phase of this journey goes.
The image above is a work by Ruth Asawa shown at an exhibition in London I visited at the beginnning of this year. How long ago it seems, when museums and galleries were open and we could visit without making an appointment in advance!
It’s been a tough year – but we’ve survived, unlike many.
Thank you for reading, following, liking, commenting – online support has meant so much during this period of social distancing.
I wish you all a safe and relaxing Christmas, and hope that the light will return next year.
According to Virginia Woolf, “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction”.
The same might be said of female artists, and I have finally achieved the second, if not the first! 😉
In theory, I have had my own workroom. When we first moved into the house 28 years ago, Ever Supportive Partner built a whole load of shelves in a room on the first floor, which instantly filled up with books.
When I became interested in textiles, my collection of fibres, materials and tools ended up in this room too. But because the shelves were full of books, there was nowhere for my stash to go, so it ended up in bags piled on the floor – and hence there was nowhere to work.
For the past few years I have worked largely on our dining room table, due to the fact that it is the largest one in the house. However, the room, which faces north-west, is rather dark, and every time we have friends round for supper or meetings I have to clear everything away (which in practice meant piling it up along the walls).
ESP was forever moaning about the mess, so last month we finally got round to installing more bookshelves in the dining room. This meant that we could move all the books downstairs, leaving the shelves upstairs free for my stuff.
We now have a lovely clutter-free dining room (if you don’t count books!), and I have a fantastic space of my own where I can leave stuff out without having to put up with ESP’s grumbling.
Note there are still three shelves of books upstairs – all textile titles. And I spent a small fortune on plastic storage boxes – they’re not as attractive as baskets but they have the virtue of being see through and (hopefully) moth proof!
I still occasionally need to work downstairs when making longer pieces such as scarves. And I will continue to dye indigo outdoors (weather permitting).
But it makes such a difference having all my stuff together in one place, easily located (for now). And although this room is actually above the dining room, it gets more light because it’s higher up.
All that remains to be done is to hang some inspiring pieces on the walls – and then move on to the first of Virginia Woolf’s requirements. 😉
Since the start of this year I’ve been taking part in the Dream Plan Do scheme run by the Design Trust to help give my business a bit of a boost.
And it’s been a real help, by making me think more strategically, setting goals, and teaming me up with a local accountability partner, Becky Bird. Becky designs some very funky prints, stationery and textiles, and we meet up once a month with emails in between to listen and give feedback on our ideas and progress, as well as giving the occasional dig in the ribs to encourage each other to get on with things. 🙂
As part of this process I decided I needed a new website – and here it is!
The idea is to showcase more clearly what I do, so I hope it does that. Undoubtedly it will develop and change as my business develops – but I would be very happy to get any feedback from you on whether the message is clear and what you think could be improved!
You will notice that this blog has been incorporated into the site just as it is – I’m not intending to change it for the time being. So I will still be posting on various textile-related topics, from arashi shibori to Zoroastrian trouser panels, and if you’ve signed up to receive updates they will still come into your inbox – you can choose to unfollow at any time.
Thank you for putting up with the trumpet blowing – normal service will now resume. 🙂
Wishing all my friends and followers, old and new, a very merry Christmas and a textile-filled 2018!
Sorry about the radio silence – I’ve been spending too much time in front of a screen building websites and not enough time by the indigo vat! 😦
I’ve just dropped in to let you know that the fab team at Just a Card are featuring me on their blog this week.
If you haven’t heard of Just a Card, it’s a campaign set up by artist and designer Sarah Hamilton to encourage people to buy from independent designer makers, galleries and shops by reinforcing the message that all purchases, however small (even “just a card”), are so vital to the prosperity and survival of small businesses.
The name came about after Sarah read about a gallery that had recently closed, with a quote from the owners saying:Â “If everyone who’d complimented our beautiful gallery had bought ‘just a card’Â we’d still be open”.
All the team are volunteers, and it’s their enthusiasm and dedication to the cause that has made the campaign such a success. Particular thanks to Kate Marsden, the Just a Card blogger, for featuring me on the site this week.
You can support the Just a Card campaign by following and sharing their posts on social media, adding their logo to your blog or site, and talking to other makers and customers.
Thank you!
Last weekend ESP and I attended a workshop together for the first time. The workshop, held at Morley College’s Pelham Hall, was billed as a one-day “Textile Metal Taster”.
Pelham Hall is an amazing converted Victorian chapel equipped for clay modelling, wood and stone carving as well as metalwork (there’s even a forge). ESP has done stone carving courses there, but this was a first-time visit for me.
I was expecting to be working with wire, mesh and textiles, but this was very much an introduction to proper basic metalwork techniques. We started with cutting, using tin snips and air tools. I had a few problems with the air tools so stuck to cutting by hand with the snips, where I felt I had more control.
Then we did a bit of beating with hammers, hole punching and soldering. I cut a circle of steel, punched a circle in the centre and pierced some holes.
As you know, I hate waste, so I then used the spot welder to attach all the tiny metal circles produced by the hole puncher.
One of the tutors said the tiny bowl on the right reminded him of a dalek!
In the afternoon we had a go at heating metal so that it changed colour – you can get some lovely rainbow effects, like oil patches on the road after rain. Naturally, I spot welded some more circles onto mine!
I didn’t do any proper soldering, but played about with the solder to produce different textures instead.
While I produced various small samples, ESP combined lots of different techniques in one piece. This included bits of metal that were left over after I had cut out more spots!
He also played around with a piece of flattened copper tubing, heating it with flux and punching it.
I really enjoyed the workshop – the tutors were enthusiastic and encouraging, and it’s surprising what beginners can produce in a day. One of the students made a bird bath; another made some angel fish.
However, I did think that the textile content was fairly token. There was a pile of fabric scraps, and we were shown how to rivet and attach textiles to metal by soldering with a copper strip. Rather than treating metal simply as a way of holding up textiles I guess I was expecting the two media to be combined in a sculptural piece. I realise this is a lot to ask in a day, but a collaboration with Morley’s excellent textiles department could produce some interesting results.
There was a box of embroidery threads and ribbons there, so I did make an effort to introduce a textile element to one of my samples! 🙂
I’m also thinking about how to incorporate some of my samples into felt, so there may be more to come on this!
Brrrr – I’m back!
Actually I returned from Mexico last week but was shocked into hibernation mode by the simultaneous sudden drop in temperature and need to gear up for Christmas markets on both days last weekend.
To be honest I was also a bit overwhelmed by the whole trip. The International Shibori Symposium was extremely intense, with workshops, talks and presentations. I learnt an incredible amount and met some very interesting people.
And my holiday was also pretty busy, with more fantastic textiles, markets and extraordinary pre-Hispanic cultural sites to fit in.
So there will be several posts about Mexico to come over the next few months.
In the meantime, while I catch my breath, here are some images of a dead leaf – what else? – that I found on a tour of the wonderful Ethnobotanic Gardens in Oaxaca.
I almost couldn’t bear to leave it behind, but I knew that even if it somehow miraculously survived the trip back to the UK, it was illegal to import it in case of disease.
So I took loads of photos instead – a piece of natural shibori. 🙂
Flextiles 