19th March 2026

Pwytho Llais or Stitching a Voice  by Bethan Hughes

Bethan began stitching at the age of 6 encouraged by her mother and her primary school teacher. Then some 27 years ago she 'got the quilting bug' and set up a group of like minded people, then  two and a half years ago Bethan changed her career leaving the local government library service to become a practioner in art and craft work making pieces to 'say something'.

The technique Bethan uses is free machine quilting to produce texture and her palette tends to be shades of black, white and red which she finds allows her to be more creative.She first used this colour palette creating a piece about the Princess of Wales who in 1282 was taken to a nunnery to extinguish the Royal bloodline. 

Bethan uses cheap cotton fabric as this has a rough surface and holds the paint she uses to 'colour' the background ready to quilt, stitch her words etc. She links her use of words in pieces to her former work within the library service.

During Covid she worked on a piece 'Together Apart' for this she dyed pieces of fabric red, black, grey, printed words onto them and cut each of them into 1" squares, Bethan then put these back together, mixing them up and stitching them together leaving gaps between the pieces.

In 2023 she applied to the Welsh Arts Council for a grant to enable her to display her work at the National Eisteddfod, while there she talked to visitors about their views /feelings etc  and collected X marks from them to stitch. 

 Photo: Dewi Tannatt Lloyd

 

The piece Bethan produced entitled 'Fragility' is about democracy, voting makes use of an X, issues are black or white, how fragile democracy is ie the hanging is easy to destroy. There are 6701 squares which represent the majority, the squares are black, white or red, have words printed on them and the X stitched, they are joined by stitching with the whole piece suspended from an Ash wood X .  

This log cabin quilt was made representing the American election with the X vote in the red square at the heart of the piece.

Bethan is an associate artist at the Ruthin Craft Centre where she has a studio space for workshops, talking with people, displaying work and getting them to think about the issues.She is also involved in Community engagement projects like the Welsh Women's Peace Petition of 1923/4 resulting in 'The Thread of Peace' where women stitched their own signatures and a 16m long roll was created.

Also work with children on a 'Welcome' project featuring teacups quilted/stitched on to brightly coloured fabric.