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HELEN SMITH
A life-long maker and lover of textiles, Helen's current obsession is weaving small format tapestries and stitching landscape-inspired quilted panels. 
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Creating soft tactile items from fabrics and yarns in gorgeous colours and patterns is my obsession and my joy.
Over the years I have practiced my crafts and investigated and learnt new techniques from other artists and teachers. I love to experiment to create new and exciting designs. I knit, spin, embroider and quilt… but of all the fibre arts I play with, tapestry weaving is my current favourite thing to do. Weaving a tapestry is a slow and meditative process in which I am fully immersed as I gradually see the patterns and colours in the cloth emerge from beneath my hands. The designs for my tapestries usually come from the doodles I make in my notebooks… but the most fun is when I dive into my baskets of woollen yarn, embroidery silks and cottons to find interesting and surprising colour combinations, often mixing 2, 3, 4 or more threads together to get the shades I want… and then I am off, warping my loom and becoming thoroughly immersed in weaving all those wonderful colours and combinations into shapes… quietly watching the piece slowly grow… |
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These stitched panels for the Land into Art project, are based on a photograph taken from near the top of Hergest Ridge. Working from subsequent sketches simplifying the lines and shapes, fabrics - including many hand-dyed - were selected, cut freely and stitched together. Each panel is padded with wool batting and heavily stitched using a domestic sewing machine.
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"Fish out of Water" 2017 - 21 x 12 cm
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"I weave small tapestries on simple frame looms using cotton for the warp and mixtures of wool, cotton and silk for weaving the weft. I love to weave my dreams and fantasy images, blending lots of colours and yarns to create shading and depth."