It's a question asked by many budding textile artists: how can I be more creative? You've got a few ideas and know some techniques, but you're not sure how to get started or make your work hang together. This book shows you how. It explains the creative process from the very beginning: where to find inspiration and how to harness those ideas; how to gather source material; how to pull together what you have. The authors then take you on a journey to develop a design. Learn how to put elements together to make a cohesive whole and develop a theme, learning established design rules along the way. Part Three, Moving into Stitch, gives you a range of techniques and easy experiments with which to turn your design into stitched-textile work. From choosing what fabrics to use, to layering, creating texture and adding embellishment, it covers the key techniques to try. This is a terrific book for those starting out in textiles who really do want to be as creative as they can possibly be.

About the Author

Julia Triston is a practising textile artist/designer and lecturer in stitch, design and surface decoration. She makes, exhibits and sells her work widely, and is renowned for the quirky use of subject, colour and embellishment in her textile-art work. She is the creator of the Bra-ra dress. Based in her studio in the heart of Durham, Julia leads her own workshop programme, and runs City and Guilds and masterclasses through StitchBusiness with Tracy A Franklin. Rachel Lombard is an award-winning textile artist and designer. Living in County Durham, Rachel runs her own business creating functional, tactile and decorative artworks. She also runs a programme of talks and workshops. Rachel is the internal verifier for StitchBusiness City and Guilds courses and has written for Stitch, Classic Stitches and Flair magazines. She exhibits her work and is an active member of Fusion and InterfaceArts.