15th May 2025

 

Catherine's work and her talk was detailed and interesting certainly demonstrating her 'Way with words' .

She comes from Lancashire her family having been connected with farming, cotton mills and industry. She has always stitched, but took a degree in maths and then taught. However in 2012 she was a leader for Quilts for London a project creating penants to give to olympic athletes of which 25,000 were produced and collected. 

Catherine's interests are felting, Dorset buttons,eco -dying using plants from her garden, patchwork, quilting and hand embroidery. She is particularly interested in how thread reacts with or compliments fabrics.

For her work Catherine uses a size 10 quilting needle, hoop/frame, appropriate threads eg vintage sylko to create the words which are the narrative telling the story, for the words she uses upper case as they are easaier and quicker to stitch. She tends to work in red (Red rose of Lancashire) and black with occassional accents of other colours.

Catherine researches collecting books of Lancashire poetry, history etc. 

When designing Catherine knows the size, shape, where it is to be hung etc proir to stitching/creating the piece eg at 1st sight she wanted a red square of colour and then the words to be revealed.

The words used may be of personal experiences (eg summer 76) or memories of others (summer 2022) Catherine collates and manipulates the words in order to create the piece of work.

Worker bee and the sound of the mill 2021 - the bee is the symbol associated with Manchester and the words are from a poem written in 1864, the words are stitched into rust dyed fabric and surround the image.

Life's rich pattern - as words are aspects of her life they inspired 'Time for Tea' the clock and the menu.

Cheesegrater with recipe for her mother's cheese and onion pie  2019.

Covid 19 - Memories of what was said and felt were doccumented.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Accrington Pals 2023 (Rose) - tells the story and honors the 720 men(represented by 720 french knots) who 'went over the top' that day with only 100 returning.

 

 

 

 

 

Memories - take time to smell the roses (2019) words and time, 1st piece of work exhibited.

Match box challenge 2023 - as children were given a match box and the competition was to collect as many items as possible to fit into it. Catherine created the Bryant and May match box using silk and vintage sylko, to display her work.