Narrative Textiles – Book Review

Ailish Henderson is an exciting young textile artist whose work is fun, quirky, tells interesting stories and uses a diverse range of media, though always grounded in cloth. In her Narrative Textiles book, she explains her working methods and how readers can harness them in their own work to create unique, deeply personal textile art pieces. She encourages readers to draw on your own personal memorabilia to create work that is meaningful – the intention is to capture a moment in time, a memory to treasure, a look on a face, a glance of love from a pet.

Ailish Henderson: https://www.ailishhenderson.com

Narrative Textiles

Throughout the book the author encourages working with freedom, instinct and honesty, bringing in a wealth of different techniques to create authentic stories in cloth, and most importantly, enjoy yourself along the way.

Narrative Textiles Book by Ailish Henderson: https://amzn.to/3Q3D8Pw 

Narrative Textiles Book by Ailish Henderson
Narrative Textiles Book by Ailish Henderson

Along with work from the author, the book also showcases work from textile artists such as Aran Illingworth, Jenni Dutton, Woo Jin Joo and Jordan Cunliffe.

Ailish Henderson is an artist, researcher and teacher who primarily works in textiles. Ailish exhibits widely, including at the Knitting and Stitching Show, and provides lectures and masterclasses to various organizations including the Embroiderers’ Guild and the WI. She has had three solo UK exhibitions to date, and has also exhibited key works in Rome. She is the former editor-in-chief for the Mr X Stitch website and her work has been featured in numerous publications, including Embroidery, Selvedge and Daphne’s Diary.

Other Book Reviews

A review of Soulful Stitch by Cas Holmes and Deena Beverley, is available here. The review is by author Deena Beverley and features many of the artworks featured in the publication.

Water Exhibition

I’m pleased to announce that Moors of Home has been selected for the Water exhibition at Village Arts in Skelmanthorpe.

Moors of Home. Part of the Water Exhibition
Moors of Home. Part of the Water Exhibition

The exhibition, featuring seventy plus works from forty artists, will be in show at Village Art, 24 Commercial Road, Skelmanthorpe, Huddersfield, HD8 9DA from the 3rd February – 1st March 2025.

Update February 2025:

Thank you to Mike Roberts of Village Arts for curating such a brilliant exhibition.

Gallery images
Gallery images
Gallery images
Gallery images
Gallery images
Gallery images

Victoria and Albert Museum Collections

I’m pleased to announce that my hand stitched coif – created for The Unstitched Coif project – is now part of the Victoria and Albert Museum Collections. So far 78 of the coifs have been documented and images will follow later in 2025.

You can view the full collection by following this link to the V&A Archives.

Catherine Hill Coif - Victoria and Albert Museum Collections
Catherine Hill Coif – Victoria and Albert Museum Collections

The project is a collaboration between the V&A and curator Toni Buckby a PhD student.

Unstitched Coif Project

The project is based on an original 17th century coif in the V&A archives in London. This coif was partially stitched and then unpicked, but the pattern is still clearly visible consisting of hand drawn flowers and whimsical bugs.

Around 130 needleworkers from across the world took part in the project.

To see more about the story behind this artwork, please follow this link.

Catherine Hill Coif
Catherine Hill Coif
Catherine Hill Coif - detail
Catherine Hill Coif – detail