Poetic Cloth

Book excerpt: A guide to creating beautiful and meaningful textiles. Poetic cloth is about how cloth, stitch and surface create personal meaning in textile art. It shows how a more thoughtful use of material and process can create textiles of depth and meaning. Grounded in the key elements of the well-established author's work, the book begins with an introduction to materials, their properties and personal meanings. Subsequent chapters help the reader to explore the connection between process and material, focusing on stitch, print, surface manipulation and construction to create seductive textile surfaces. The emphasis throughout is on a sensitivity to material, a quiet attention to detail and thoughtful application of textile technique. The chapters are: Touch (cloth and swatch); Stitch (mark, surface and space); Trace (layer and shadow play); Fragment (worn, threadbare, cobweb); Mend (patch, seam, and darn); Lustre (alchemy and radiance). Techniques include hand stitch, shadow work, patching, darning, devoré and cyanotype printing. Written by member of the prestigious 62 Group Hannah Lamb, this is an invaluable book for textile artists who want to give more meaning to their work.