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This beautiful new book is translated from the Japanese book Darning Brooches by Hikaru Noguchi! Filled with her usual inspirational images, this is the perfect guide for those interested in preserving their garments and fabrics with mending techniques. The invention of the Darning Brooch allows you to give new life to precious fabric fragments you can't bear to part with by creating accessories that you can keep, gift or wear. Use the fabric and thread you have at home to make these beautiful pieces, each one of which will be unique to you. All the basic darning stitches are included for beginners with step-by-step photographs, so you can mend your clothes and save them from landfill, as well as preserving memories by turning your fragments into mementoes. If you don't feel like wearing visible mending on your clothes, you can wear them as accessories instead. No previous sewing experience is necessary and full instructions for creating the brooches is included. This is the only darning book you will ever need.

Recent years have seen a decline in craft and creative education in schools and a shift from practical to theoretical learning models in higher education. Young people are leaving school with no idea that craft-based careers are even possible, and graduates of craft-based degree courses are entering the workplace with so few hand skills that their employers must train them from scratch. Where did the idea come from that white-collar work should be rewarded more with money and status than that of a blue-collar worker? Intelligent Hands looks at this phenomenon, the historical precedents that led us here and why hand skills are crucial in education and for lifelong learning. The authors are on a mission to enlighten the uninitiated and persuade the nay-sayers who dismiss craft as no more than a nice hobby or believe that doing things with your hands is for those who can't use their heads. And for the converted, we offer more grist to your mills, ammunition for funding applications, inspiration for those who plan school curricula and further reading for your speciality. Intelligent Hands brings existing research and information together in an accessible format for those for those who don't have time to trawl through all the information that is already out there. With a brief look at the history of practical education, we have collated some of the research that has been done in disparate fields to show that combining physical ways of learning with the conceptual in education is the way forward. We include the personal stories of ten people who have discovered that working with their hands has improved their quality of life. Through the three sections of the book, we look at how physical labouring became separated from academic study, how we became divorced from the materials that surround us and the important role that the crafts and creativity have to play in education, not just for the lower streams, but for everyone. In short, how making is a skill for life.

The Red Dress: 380 Embroiderers, 51 countries, 1 dress The Red Dress project, conceived by British artist Kirstie Macleod, offers a platform for people, mostly women, who are vulnerable and live in poverty to share their stories through embroidery. The completed Red Dress travelled for 14.5 years and was embroidered by 367 women/girls, 7 men/boys, and 2 non-binary artists from 51 countries. All 141 commissioned artisans were paid for their work and received annual donations from exhibition fees and merchandise profit. Additional small embroideries were added by participants and audiences at various events. Stitch as a dialogueInitially, The Red Dress project sought to generate a dialogue of identity through embroidery, merging diverse cultures across borders. Over the years however, the dress has also become a platform for self-expression and an opportunity for voices to be amplified and heard.The Red Dress aims to reach and connect with a wide-ranging audience, although it speaks particularly to women and values a process that can be seen as domestic labour or craft and which is often undervalued. The dress has made a positive impact on the lives of many (both its embroiderers and audiences) and has the potential to change the lives of women for many years to come.

Darning Socks contains a collection of ideas and full step-by-step instructions for applying visible mending to socks, making them stay in use and keeping them out of landfill.This beautiful new book is translated from the Japanese book by Hikaru Noguchi and offers her usual high level of beautiful photography and inspirational ideas. Hikaru has invented a novel way to make the mends on your socks last even longer, saving you time and energy.No previous sewing experience is necessary and full instructions are included, from the easy way to thread a needle and choosing the right thread, to the inspirational use of colour and innovative materials for the experienced sewer.Author Hikaru Noguchi is one of the leading designers and creators of darned fabrics and spear-headed the recent revival in darning. She moved to England from Japan in 1989 to study constructed textiles and after completing her studies at Middlesex University she developed new and innovative textiles with designers including Tom Dixon, Top Shop and projects for Barneys, Browns, Paul Smith women, Takashimaya New York and many others. Hikaru has participated in many shows and exhibitions all over the world, and her knitwear designs are sold in boutiques and department stores in London, Paris, New York and Tokyo. Her other publications include Beyond Darning, Darning: Repair, make, mend, Creative Mending and Made in France: Knitting.

By Hook: crochet with natural fibres features 12 original projects by contemporary textile artists, all of whom are using innovative techniques and finding new ways of making By Hook inspires crochet fans and gives them the courage to try something new.By Hook empowers readers to create rather than recreate. Crochet can be three-dimensional and playful and lends itself to organic, natural shapes. To that end, this book gathers formulae that originate in the organic world – a flat circle, curly corals, freeform crochet – to provide readers with the know-how to resist prescriptive patterns and find their own forms.By Hook: crochet with natural fibres is a book for those who have already learned to crochet but have found it stuck in the past. This informative and beautifully illustrated publication shows how it is a craft for the contemporary world.

The Red Dress: 380 Embroiderers, 51 countries, 1 dressThe Red Dress project, conceived by British artist Kirstie Macleod, offers a platform for people, mostly women, who are vulnerable and live in poverty to share their stories through embroidery. The completed Red Dress travelled for 14.5 years and was embroidered by 367 women/girls, 7 men/boys, and 2 non-binary artists from 51 countries. All 141 commissioned artisans were paid for their work and received annual donations from exhibition fees and merchandise profit. Additional small embroideries were added by participants and audiences at various events.Stitch as a dialogueInitially, The Red Dress project sought to generate a dialogue of identity through embroidery, merging diverse cultures across borders. Over the years however, the dress has also become a platform for self-expression and an opportunity for voices to be amplified and heard.The Red Dress aims to reach and connect with a wide-ranging audience, although it speaks particularly to women and values a process that can be seen as domestic labour or craft and which is often undervalued. The dress has made a positive impact on the lives of many (both its embroiderers and audiences) and has the potential to change the lives of women for many years to come.

Sue Brown is an artist inspired by nature as much as by process. Encounters with birds, activities on the allotment and the garden are recorded through sketchbook drawings and printmaking, capturing the beauty of the natural world. Learn how to collect items from nature and use them to print and collage a record. This book shares many of the techniques Sue Brown uses to record the natural environment: simple printmaking, cyanotype and botanical contact prints. Working with natural materials and processes is an excellent way to record walks, keep a journal of the development of a garden or a sketchbook marking the passing of the seasons.In this world we yearn to slow down, find space in our lives and re connect with nature, to that end we often look to the natural world to recharge. It is accepted that being in nature makes us feel physically and psychologically better, whether it is a long walk in the countryside, a stroll in a local park or sitting in a garden. As part of that connection with nature we record it through photographs, drawings or collecting leaves, feathers, stones, and shells. We like to bring the outside into our homes with collections and reminders of our experiences of the great outdoors.

These improvised acts are raw creativity, mostly by untrained designers at zero or very little cost, tackling problems in ingenious ways and featuring highly original uses of objects and surroundings. The book inspires readers to see and use things in new and smarter ways by revealing original and exciting new perspectives.In this book we see some problems that have been solved through improvisation in immediate on-the-spot reactions to circumstance, there are also results achieved after meditation on a problem prior to assembling a solution. We see answers to challenges faced by us all at one time or another, for example how to keep dry during a sudden shower, find shade, shelter or a comfortable place to sit whilst waiting for the bus. As well as seeing selections of victories over these common trials there are examples of improvements on existing designs – making things easier or better functioning. There are also collections of varied solutions found to the same problem, some examples of innovative, enterprising and entrepreneurial ideas and a section on the playful disposal of objects – some creating witty and surprising street surrealism. Featured are an array of different uses made of the same objects and materials. These show the significant ability of creative thinking to extend the life of things after their intended purpose has come to an end, frequently through the discovery of radically new uses and functions undreamed of by their original designers.

It's time to reconsider the value of our waste. In the past these were valuable commodities you could sell on. Gathering rag and turning it into yarn was rich in the possibility of making things. This Manifesto is a unique, artist's view of the traditional art of rag rug making for this age of the Anthropocene. Projects made in the artist's studio and with a community group, highlight a reverence for our lost textiles, a response to the environmental impact of fast fashion and a proof that rag is a rich resource, wrongly classed as a taboo material.In this book Rachael Matthews gives us permission to cut up our old fabrics offering a support structure for decision making and a chart on how to make liberating decisions about destroying a garment - be it 'Worn Out Emotional', or 'Brand New and Guilty' - and how our actions can develop community as well as our own self-esteem. A modernist interpretation of rag weaving European modernist painters, such as Ben and Winifred Nicholson, became interested in Rag Rug making in the 1920s. Picasso inspired freedom in creativity, using found materials and recognising that 'primitive' art was highly skilled. The art world missed a trick in not accepting these painterly rag works as true art and many have been lost. A century later, post pandemic, the need for a community to gather and make textiles was strengthened by a shared concern about the textile waste found on the streets where they live. This led to the artist founding Rag School, an on-line studio to rediscover the lost ways of making things. This led to a real-life rag studio with East London Textiles Arts, piloting ways that diverse communities everywhere could re-learn how to process textile waste in beautiful ways, caring for each other along the way. The transformation of waste has been a valuable remedy in recovering from the collective trauma of the pandemic: ripping is thrilling, storytelling cathartic, and the craft work a great place of focus and thought. The economic value of rag Textile manufacture is the second largest contributor to climate change and damage to the environment. The psychological impact that fast fashion imposed on us, has blurred our ability to see the potential of the materials we throw away. Popularity of handicrafts such as patchwork and dressmaking has led to an increase in knowledge of loveable, sustainable materials, but we often turn a blind eye to the more problematic fabrics. Some synthetic materials are unlikely to ever break down, while Itchy uniforms, saggy Lycra, odd socks, uncomfortable underwear and vulgar fashion statements come to their 'end of life' too soon. This book helps to break down all fears of what to do next with the rag pile. The stuff you loved can stay with you forever and the stuff you hated can be loved and laughed over in ways you never thought possible. Includes the techniques of plaiting; Welsh weaving sticks; peg loom; rigid heddle weaving; proddy on hessian; loomless weaving and passementerie. 'This special book deals with the urgent need to find ways of relating with textiles that, instead of contributing to social injustice and environmental degradation, actively contribute to the world. Stories change the future. The stories in this book are already changing things. They are about caring and repairing our places and communities with imagination, action and each other.' Professor Kate Fletcher, Royal Danish Academy - Architecture, Design, Conservation. Rachael Matthews is a ‘big thinker’ but more importantly she is a big doer. Her energy, enthusiasm and inventiveness are infectious. Her philosophy for dealing with the mass of textile waste that literally surrounds us is tangible. To follow in her footsteps all you need to do is to buy this book. Everything else is free. Freddie Robins, artist and Professor of Textiles, Royal College of Art, London

The author's work is both personal and political. It ranges from tiny colourful hand embroidered fragments recording everyday life in South London and Yorkshire, to monumental, site-specific banners made with construction workers in the north of England. As a collection it describes the author's life in stitch and details how an artist-embroiderer works and thinks creatively, how projects are managed and take shape and some of the hurdles encountered in socially engaged practice. The projects described in this book encompass themes of identity and belonging, health and wellbeing, sustainability, community cohesion and social inequality, offering sensory testaments of life today.The author includes a section on running community workshops, the pitfalls and joys, for other people attempting the same.