My journey into creative textiles began in September 2014 when I enrolled on a course with textile artist Kim Thittichai. I had a teaching and art background but my only sewing experience was making some clothes as a student and having a nasty, scary needlework teacher at school who convinced me that I was hopeless with any form of sharp implement.

I’d first come across Kim at a DT show at the NEC where she was happily shrivelling up tyvek and layering painted Bondaweb. I bought one of her books and decided I had to get in on the act. Her ‘Experimental Textiles’ course was run at The Inkberrow Design Centre in Redditch. My husband looked at the things I brought home and referred to it as ‘Extreme Textiles’ instead, which wasn’t entirely inappropriate. I loved it! We met one weekend a month and it was huge fun learning new techniques and using different materials. It didn’t matter that I only knew how to do a running stitch as the emphasis was on ‘play’ and ‘design through process’. I began to see stitches as a form of mark making.

I also met some talented, creative women on the course. We finished in March 2015 with an exhibition at the NEC at a textile show which was great experience in itself. However four of us decided we didn’t want this to end and formed our own textile group. We booked a space at the NEC show the following March. Kim kindly took us on as an ExEx Tex group and tutored us for the next year too.

We initially called ourselves Kinetex and came up with a theme of ‘Elements’ for our first exhibition. We like to have a shared theme as it helps focus us and although we all work in different ways it gives an exhibition a sense of unity.
 
So we had fire, air, land and water and each took one element. I had land. I made large silk bowls and textural hangings that were reminiscent of aerial photos.

​It was nerve wracking at first. Just physically setting out and putting up the pieces was a steep learning curve. The exhibition went really well though and those people who came and talked to us seemed to like it. For me, talking to complete strangers about the work was difficult initially but now I really enjoy it.
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Since then, we have exhibited once or twice every year ( until COVID came along) at large textile shows at the NEC, Bristol, Leicester and Uttoxeter. We want to branch out more and are hoping to show in the spring at Art Yard in Cradley Heath although that depends on lockdown.

The numbers in our group have varied as we’ve acquired and lost members over time. We also changed our name are now called ‘On The Surface’. We always have 3D and 2D pieces and our work is quite art based. We currently have eight talented and diverse members some of whom are in other groups too including Out of Line, Prism, Meniscus and Midlands Textile Forum as-well as exhibiting in their own right. At the moment we are not on social media, it’s something we know we need to tackle. We did have a website but were hopeless at updating it.

Currently, three of us are working our way through City and Guilds, two have completed Art foundation courses. Catherine Howard went on to enrol on an MA and she’s now doing a PhD in her 60s ! I’m also a member of the Society For Embroidered Work.
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What began as an exciting, non- traditional textile course has led to so many further opportunities; forming an exhibiting group, developing our individual creative practices, gaining further qualifications and giving us a supportive network of great friends.

In February we were joined via Zoom by Zoe Hillyard.
Zoe is a lecturer of textiles at Birmingham City University, but also has her own artistic practice.
Zoe re-builds broken pottery and vases by covering the pieces with silk fabric and stitching them together again.
Zoe's beautiful works have been focused in many home decoration magazines and exhibited widely, including the Saatchi Gallery.

Warwickshire Open Studios

In 2014 I applied online to take part in Warwickshire Open Studios and one of the organisers, Jo, invited me to share her studios near Bedworth. I started a visitors’ book and asked people to leave their details if they were interested in taking part in a workshop and I held a workshop the following autumn and did not need to advertise it as I filled all the spaces from my book.

It was quite a blow not to be invited back the following year, but as I learned, most artists like new faces to show their work with. Jo introduced me to Dawn, who at that time ran Ragley Studios. I was shocked to experience some hostility from the full-time professional artists there. However once they realised that I was paying the same weekly rent as they were (for much less space!) there was a definite warming of the atmosphere and we got on extremely well after that!
In following years I have teamed up with contacts nearer to home and shown my work in their homes.

​Positives:
* meeting other artists and widening my circle of contacts
* being accepted by “proper” artists
* learning to discuss my work with visitors
* my visitors’ book - looking back at all the positive comments cheers me up
* having fun!

Negatives:
* there are always people who say, “oh no, it’s textiles”, and veer away in horror.
* other artists can be unfriendly at first - take cake and offer to make the tea.
* it is quite an expensive process - there is a fee to join WOS, a fee to appear in the glossy brochure and often more printing expenses charged by the individual venue. I have sold work but never made a profit - yet!
* I had taken unfinished pieces of work as a conversation starter or to illustrate ideas and ended up selling most of them, against my better judgement. I still regret this and would strongly advise against doing this.