Bright Curved Weave

Bright Curved Weave

35 cm × 38 cm

This abstract embroidery combines two strands of my textile practice. Before concentrating on embroidery, I studied weave, where I became fascinated by colour-and-weave effects and the elegant geometric notation used to record woven structures. It was this work that earned me Royal Society of Art bursaries, and those ideas have stayed with me ever since.

Without a loom, I began to wonder whether a woven structure could be interpreted using stitch instead. The composition is based on a curved twill draft—the same type of block pattern found in weaving manuals—but translated into layers of thread, fabric and embroidery rather than warp and weft.

The vibrant colours are drawn from my Galaxy series, linking this piece to another body of work while exploring a very different way of thinking about structure and surface. Although abstract, it reflects the pleasure I have always found in the interaction between colour, rhythm and repetition.

Rather than recreating a piece of woven cloth, Bright Weave is an embroidered interpretation of weaving itself.