Modern Crewel Embroidery Exhibition at The Stitch Festival in London

Earlier this month I headed down to London, from Scotland, to mount my first solo embroidery exhibition as part of The Stitch Festival, a four-day consumer show focusing on all things stitchy: dress-making, quilting, embroidery, knitting, crocheting and more.

When writing my book Modern Crewel Embroidery I started thinking about how many beautiful embroidery pieces I was accruing and how lovely it would be to mount them in an exhibition and share them with the world. I was already aware of The Stitch Festival, it had been launched in 2020 as a re-branding of the Spring Knitting and Stitching Show and was one of the last large events in the UK to go ahead before the pandemic hit and we went into lockdown.

I approached the organizers with my idea around 18 months ago and they were very keen to let me have a gallery space for the exhibition. As I wanted this to be a way to promote the book and educate the public on my modern approach to crewel embroidery I signed up to teach workshops and give demos in the live theatre too.This meant I had an extremely busy show!

It’s quite a while since I finished all the book samples which has given me plenty of time to create new embroideries, both for my own pleasure and also for magazine commissions, and so the exhibition was roughly half book and half new pieces. It even included a couple of older creations where I had mixed fabric appliqué with crewel embroidery.

I was also able to unveil two brand new pieces especially for the exhibition. The first was a new hoop in my ‘Hidden Animal’ series ‘Hidden hare’, which accompanies my Hidden Peacock and Hidden Tiger hoops. The stitching on this was completed the day before I left for London! The second is my Temperature Embroidery which I completed for the whole of 2021 and shows the highest temperature (centre circle) and the lowest circle (surrounding ring) for every day, set out in 52 weekly rows.

As well as the hoops and banners on the wall I was able to display two pillows and a pouch on some ladder shelves. The book projects include a belt and a brooch both of which I managed to wear as part of my outfit every day, making myself part of the exhibition!I also brought along some of the mini projects from the book such as the pincushion trio and the needle book.This last item was clearly the most popular thing in the whole gallery space. People loved it and I think I sold more books from those that wanted to try and make this item than any other!

The gallery space was divided in to two halves with my good friend and fellow C&T author Sarah Ashford taking the other side. She was displaying all the Hope Mini Quilts from the challenge set by Sarah’s Great British Quilter community which became an exhibition at Festival of Quilts last year. The Stitch Festival is organized by the same company and they asked Sarah to bring this fabulous exhibition to London too. 

Sarah and I shared a sales table for our books and accompanying Aurifil thread boxes (as well as local digs in London!). The gallery space was extremely busy and despite sharing the sales table and being able to cover for each other during teaching it was one of the most manic events I have ever attended and it has taken me about a week to recover! This is also the reason why I took so few photos while at the show. 

It was wonderful to get so much positive and enthusiastic feedback from all the visitors to the gallery. They loved seeing the embroideries ‘in the thread’ and getting the full three-dimensional texture of the wool embroidery. Even those familiar with my work were amazed at how much richer and more vibrant the pieces are in real life.Many folks left the space with a book, a box of threads and a new determination to start creating their own versions of my Modern Crewel Embroideries!

Would you like to try this relaxing and mindful craft? Shop Modern Crewel Embroidery.

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