Lalla Ward's Vanishing Act

LallaWard 

has a new exhibition coming up at the National Theatre called Vanishing Act

It's staged as an encore applauding

Lalla's penchant for flora, fauna and fibre so admired in her previous exhibitions. 

Lalla's exquisitely stitched textile pieces capture the amazing ability of many animals, reptiles, amphibians and insects to blend in with their natural environments.

It's a clever idea, brilliantly executed. 

moth by Lalla Ward  rests on artisan bowl by Nick Kettlewell

The camouflage theme plays out across a wide variety of materials ranging

from hand turned wooden bowls to meticulously stitched moths. 

Lalla with her sketch book

Lalla's work has a curious impact on the viewer.

It draws you in as you look ...again and again... to find
what's hidden in plain sight

Viewers often ask Lalla how she creates her pieces. So as a new feature of the exhibition, Lalla will stage a mini-mock-up of her work space, offering a behind the scenes glimpse of  the tools, materials and techniques that she uses to stitch the pieces.

 

Vanishing Act

by textile artist Lalla Ward

on show at the National Theatre

April 1st through May 12th

Be sure to catch it before it disappears!

Lalla's textile art work was stitched using a
JUKI straight stitch TL98P sewing machine 
with a wide variety of Superior Threads. You can see them on display 

at the National Theatre through out the exhibition. 

The Vanishing Act exhibition is Free! 

Feathers to Foliage

It was meant to be all about feathers

but our direction took a rather fruitful detour from feathers to foliage. Everybody in quilting loves feathers! We love the way the light bounces off the tear-drop shapes. So feathering is guaranteed to have a popular following. There is a certain progression that helps even the newest machine quilter gain confidence in creating the much loved feather shape. We begin with a simple pattern of hearts and loops. The loops help us to manoeuvre every-which-way around our quilt top. The hearts teach us to create the all important tear-drop shape. Put them together and you've got a simple line design that is going places. And it did go places, just not quite where we expected. 

We had the good fortune to have Lalla Ward as our 'resident Art Quilter' for this Retreat. And Lalla brought her sketchbooks and a lovely leaf book. When Lalla made the little leap from hearts to leaves we all wanted to have a try.. 

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of leaf shapes all begging to be combined in all sorts of lovely arrangements. So we spent some time going from drawing on paper to drawing on fabric. Then we experimented with what the leaves would look like in different sorts of thread. 

These photos capture a marvellous few minutes where everyone was happily drawing all sorts of leaves...

.

...moving the pens in the very same way that soon they would be guiding the sewing machine. 

In the end it doesn't matter what we draw. What matters is that we do draw all the time and in all sorts of places; envelopes, spare bits of paper, sketchbooks, rolls of paper from Early Learning Centre. Once we're confident on paper we can do it on quilt tops. Our Art Quilter frame transforms the sewing machine needle into a pencil. That means whatever we can draw we can quilt. Simple leaf shapes can be connected by loops and aimed in all sorts of directions to create an infinite variety of gorgeous quilted shapes. The possibilities are endless.

Cool Customer

I had a phone call from a textile artist a few days ago. She rang because doing free-motion embroidery sitting at the sewing machine was giving her a 'pain in the neck!'... and shoulders and back! She'd gotten to the point where she was desperate to find "a better way to do this!!" So she stumbled across our website and gave us a ring. I'm glad she did!

We designed the Art Quilter just for people like Lalla Ward - textile artists working on smaller projects who want to use a frame like an easel and a sewing machine needle like a paint brush. In describing her work Lalla said "Well actually, I paint with my needle." Lalla creates exquisite thread painted pieces and her new exhibition Migration is opening Monday at the National Theatre in London.

In Migration, Lalla is using textiles and ceramics as she continues to develop a wildlife theme. The dates are from Monday 19 September though to Sunday 30 October. Emily and I are hoping to sneak a peak when we drop Emily off at university this weekend. Quilting Arts magazine interviewed Lalla last year about an earlier exhibition titled 'Stranded'. You can follow the link to find out more about Lalla's work. Don't forget to catch Lalla's exhibition at the National Theatre from now through the end of October.