Needles & Natter Conversation 3

This is the third of my series of posts of conversations with some of the members of the Needles & Natter group that I am part of on Thursday mornings. Hope you enjoy!


Hello to .... Natalie! 

Natalie with her favourite old red Viking Husqvana sewing machine
which she got as a present for her 18th birthday.
"The other machine is for when No 1 machine is on holiday or on strike"!

Natalie is an artist who trained at Loughborough Art College where she specialised in textile design and printing furnishing fabrics. She worked in the furnishing trade for "Textra Furnishing Fabrics" for almost ten years as a colourist and designer before having children. The arrival of children meant a new phase in her work - less working for other people and much more for herself, (as much as time and energy allowed). Now as well as her own art-work, she teaches workshops for adults including mosaic-making, printing and curtain-making and combines this with her work with pre-school children at Kennington Playgroup and as a child minder. "The constant throughout has been doing my own art-work alongside whatever I've done." Natalie lives in Kennington just outside Oxford and she is instrumental in organising a group of Kennington artists who hold two exhibitions a year. One is coming up shortly for "Oxfordshire Art Weeks" and is open from Thursday 24th May to Sunday 27th May 2012.

What type are your needles of choice? "Sewing machine - I've always had a sewing machine. I had my first one when was I was six. As a child I used to make and sell mouse finger puppets which I designed as collectables - it was quite a good little earner!  I grew up making many of my own clothes sometimes out of insane things such as when I made a stripy, short-sleeved top with pockets out of a pair of men's pyjamas! I still make clothes, even my sister in law's wedding dress and I make curtains of course. My sewing machine doesn't feel like a machine but is just an extension of me really. Knitting is beyond me. Crochet is a very new skill that I've only learnt recently. It was something my maternal grandmother always used to do. My other grandmother knitted and had a knitting shop. I can remember very clearly my maternal grandmother being able to whisk something up with her hook almost while you waited - it was fabulous. You know, if it was cold and you wanted to go out, she would virtually hook up a hat before you went out to play! She could crochet anything and did - clothes, accessories, household furnishings, you name it. I never learnt how to crochet from her which was so silly when there was someone so gifted to hand. I decided to go on a crocheting course really as a way of remembering her and because I felt cross with myself that I hadn't learnt from her before she died. I may take up knitting one day but not yet! Having learnt how to do the basics with crochet, I can now follow patterns and I've even made something I designed from scratch." 

Tell us about your current WIP. 

"My most recent WIP has just reached completion - it's a crochet bag. I wanted to make something without a pattern and have a go at being creative like my Granny who never seemed to use any pattern at all but just designed as she went along. It had to be simple in shape, as this was my first design attempt, so I just started with four granny squares and then added extra stripes by way of borders round the sides and at the top and bottom. I added a scalloped edge, that I'd learnt how to do on my gloves, on the bottom and a picot edge on the top. It's made from all up-cycled wool, some from Orinoco and the rest from jumble sales and unravelled jumpers and things." (Ed: Orinoco is an Oxford-based scrap store which sells all kinds of art and craft materials very cheaply) "I've put in a fabric lining which I hand-stitched to the outer bag and I inserted a zip so that things don't fall out. The Needles & Natter group helped me work out how to join the bag together and how to fix on the handles. I have a commission now to make another in autumn colours highlighted with some blue for a friend from South Africa. I hope I can remember exactly what I did with this one!"

Can we have a peek? 

Natalie's crochet bag made from her own design and up-cycled yarn

What recent projects are you most proud of completing and why? 
"These fingerless gloves which involved following a pattern for the first time. I'm especially proud of circumnavigating the fingerless bits and the fact that they actually fit!" 

Natalie's first crochet project - fingerless gloves...

... finished just in time to throw a snowball or two!

What's in the pipeline next? 

"I am just finishing a series of pics which are a combination of art work and crochet. I've been inspired by the way crochet has evolved and is evolving from something quite fuddy-duddy and exclusively the preserve of elderly grannies to something that has become cutting-edge and mainstream in many designers' work, whether that's in clothes or home furnishings. I'm really interested in the decorative element of crochet as an art form and how it's used in the textile industry. Echoes of crochet have found their way into much of my art work - I use borders and frames in my work a lot and I like to replicate the effect of crochet and lace using ink and collage. I am excited about the idea of painting and crochet intersecting and seeing what the synthesis produces. There's just not enough time to do it all!" 

Lino print with crochet edging being added along the edges

What top tips would you give someone starting out with their needles? "Don't be afraid of having a go. And may be have a lesson to get started. It's very different when you actually have someone there to show you how to do something. The Needles & Natter group is great for this as well as for keeping you going with things. I have to say I never read a manual for anything! The idea behind my workshops is to offer these kinds of hands-on opportunities for people to try things out. I've got a couple coming up on styrofoam printing, on Friday 25th and Saturday 26th May 2012 from 9.30 - 11.30 am. It's only £10 per person and all the materials are provided. If anyone's interested, feel free to contact me via my website." 

Tell us about what's in your fabric / yarn stash! 

"Ah! Now you're talking! Where to begin?! My fabric stash is enormous! I have loads of vintage stuff - fabrics that belonged to my grandparents, bits and pieces picked up from jumble sales and church fêtes - lots of tablecloths, antimacassars, and all sorts of bits of embroidery. Sometimes I get pieces which are damaged or stained, which I've picked up quite cheaply and I cut them up and make them into new things. I make bags made out of old embroidery and am hoping to get an Etsy site in due course. I have piles of furnishing fabrics coming-out of my ears and trunks with all sorts of bits and pieces. I have quite a bit of wool - mostly up-cycled wool, from Orinoco or from unravelled jumpers. Once people know I collect this stuff, they often pass on bits and pieces they don't want any more. I acquired an old, rather stained quilt like this which I nearly cut up before I realised what that it was something special - it turned out to have been made by disabled veterans after the First World War."

What are your favourite sources of inspiration? 

"Natalie's Roses"

"Because of my design training I am perpetually interested in furnishing fabrics and the way designs are used in a decorative way. Sometimes I move away from the decorative theme but a lot of my work could be used like that even if it's a one-off piece. When I was working for Textra I produced a one-off piece of art work that was then commissioned to be produced as a repeat on fabric and it became an M&S bestseller in their home furnishings range. The fabric was called "Natalie's Roses". Fabric is always a source of inspiration. I have a small collection of old traditional furnishing fabrics that I've inherited, including quite a few vintage Sanderson linens. Since having children, we've tended to have  sea-side holidays and I've found the sea-side a great source of inspiration as well - boats, sea scenes, sea colours, driftwood etc. But there tends always to be a recurring undercurrent of floral echoes in my work." 

Drawings from Natalie's sketch book which became ...

... this as a screen-print!

Lino print

Screen-print and collage

Some of Natalie's other art prints using a variety of printing methods:

Natalie's seaside-inspired screen-print
designed to reflect the sometimes ambivalent love/hate relationship
we have with seagulls.

Natalie's 3-dimensional seaside-inspired piece
using up-cycled vintage maps and sewing patterns,
stitching and a driftwood boat with sails up-cycled from vintage linens.

Needles & Natter sessions are always accompanied by a nibble or two! What's your favourite homemade nibble? "Chocolate brownie or any kind of cake-and-cream combination!"  

Thank you, Natalie, for sharing your needles and nattering on my blog
and for giving a glimpse into a world where what's on the needles becomes part of art and vice versa.