Textile art · West Yorkshire → Lisbon
Nature,
kept wild.
Hand-dyed, hand-stitched textile work. Made slowly. Made once.
See my workSelected work
Look again.
Each piece is built to be looked at slowly and repeatedly. Look again, and there is usually something you didn’t catch the first time.
Every piece begins as separate fragments. Hand dyed fabrics, photo transfers of old family photographs, book pages, drawings, painted textures, gathered over months and stitched into one. Some edges are left raw, some are stitched down. The neat against the unfinished is where it comes alive.
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Tide Lines A love letter to the sea and everyone I’ve stood beside it with. Vintage photographs of grandparents, aunts and uncles sit alongside images of my daughter and my mum, frayed into textiles, stitched over years, finally gathered into one piece. Mounted on driftwood I found on the shore; my own watercolour fish, transferred to fabric, swimming through it all. -
What We Planted My grandparents’ garden, the one I grew up playing in, now gone. Vintage photographs are layered with images of my daughter and the plants she’s grown, alongside my own drawings of flowers made three-dimensional in stitch and textile. Distressed and cut into, collaged and built up, mounted on a stick she found. -
Spill A watercolour painting of mine, transferred to fabric and set free from the hoop. Tie-dye cloth drapes and hangs beneath it, hand-stitched for texture. Something that wanted to be bigger than its frame. -
Last Light Dyed fabrics layered into a sunset over water — cut back to reveal what’s underneath, hand-stitched, beaded, with shining thread catching the last of the light. A piece that became a conversation with Tide Lines, each one teaching the other. -
Fathoms Layers of transferred watercolour fish paintings surface through distressed, cut-back fabric, text glimpsed underneath, colour building through the depths. The edges finished clean and neat; a quiet counterpoint to all the fraying within.
In the studio
Cloth, stitch, and time.
I have been hand-dyeing fabric for over twenty years, and I still do it for the unpredictability. You set a colour going that you cannot fully control, then you take what comes out and turn it into something else.
A piece takes about three months, and half of that is thinking. I pick it up, put it down, leave it on the wall, and wait until I know what it needs next. The thinking is as much the work as the stitching is.
Then the building. Family photographs and painted textures transferred onto cloth, layered, and drawn over with a sewing machine. Some edges left raw, some stitched down. I keep going until it gives up something new every time I look at it.
About
I draw with a sewing machine.
My work is mixed media, built up in layers. Hand-dyed fabric, machine stitch, hand embroidery, and photo transfers carrying family photographs, drawings, and paintings that I have made. I gather these pieces over time and bring them together into one, keeping some edges raw and stitching others down, so the neat sits against the unfinished.
I have been dyeing and stitching fabric for twenty-five years. What keeps me with both is the unpredictability. You make something you cannot fully control, then turn it into something else. A single piece takes around three months, and half of that is thinking. Picking it up, putting it down, letting it settle, working out what it needs next.
The work is rooted in nature. The sea, gardens, greenery, the places that bring me calm and steadiness. It is raw and untamed in its edges and its textures, and what I want you to feel is nostalgia, and interest, and the pull to look again. Each time, something new. A detail, a texture, something half-hidden you missed before.
I trained in printed textiles and taught for years before this became something I make to be looked at rather than used. I work from West Yorkshire, soon Lisbon, and I expect that move to find its way into the colour.
Every piece is one of a kind. Made slowly. Made to keep revealing itself.
Contact
Originals and commissions.
For exhibitions, commissions, or to see a portfolio, send a note.
Or find the work on @tabi.connolly