Sue redhead
sue12385@gmail.com
The Watermelon and the Kingfisher's Feather
35.5" x 18.5"
Techniques: machine piecing, applique and quilting
thread painting on soluble stabilizer
Materials: commercial cottons
Artist Statement:
Created in appreciation of Galileo’s experiment about which Newton and Einstein disagreed. According to Newton the acceleration due to gravity is the same for both heavy and light objects, so, when dropped at the same time, in a vacuum, they reach the ground at the same time. However Einstein theorized that they are not falling, they are standing still, because no force is acting on them: he reasoned that if the background cannot be seen (or understood) then there is no way of knowing if the objects are being accelerated towards the earth. So he concluded they aren’t.
Photographer: Mike Williams
Waiting and Watching
21.5" x 29.5"
Techniques: ice dyeing, fabric painting, machine and hand quilting, hand embroidery (French knots), unfused raw edge applique
Materials: hand-dyed cotton fabric (whole cloth background), embroidery floss, Perle cotton, Cosmic Shimmer, metallic acrylic paint
Artist Statement: The inspiration was a photograph taken by Mike Williams of a belted kingfisher patiently waiting on a branch. I am a keen birdwatcher so this was a wonderful jumping-off point for me. I played extensively with ice dyeing during the pandemic and this piece lent itself to a lot of hand stitching, including several skeins of green embroidery threads for the lichen and moss French knots.
Photographer: Mike Williams
Waiting and Watching - Detail
Still Waiting and Watching
19" x 28.5"
Techniques: raw edge, free cut, unfused fabric collage
machine quilting and applique
Materials: commercial and hand-dyed cottons
Artist Statement:
I am a birder as much as I am a textile artist and spend as much time birding as I do stitching.
This is another piece inspired by a photograph by Mike Williams of a belted kingfisher.
Photographer: Mike Williams
Still Waiting and Watching - Detail
Reverberations
34" x 37"
Techniques: wet felting
hand quilting and embroidery
free motion machine quilting and applique
Materials: wool roving
hand dyed cotton (wholecloth background)
perle cotton
Created in memory of the coronavirus pandemic. While the word ‘reverberations’ usually has negative connotations, this piece focused on some (smaller) positive reverberations: extensive time to experiment with dyeing, wet felting, and intuitive slow stitching. The whole cloth ice dyed fabric is the backdrop for the loose interpretation of the commonly seen virus graphic.
Photographer: Mike Williams
All From One
30" x 25.5"
Techniques: fused, machine applique
machine quilting
Materials: commercial cotton
batiks
Artist Statement:
This piece highlights our continents’ locations within the single ancient landmass of Pangaea: puzzle pieces in a global jigsaw. Pangaea contained no countries, nor unnatural borders, nor saw any wars for global domination: our current lands (as demarcated by humans) were seamless parts of one whole land.
Earth’s present-day continents are continuing to break apart and scientists predict that, eventually, another supercontinent will form.
Photographer: Mike Williams
The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash
12" x 12"
Techniques: machine applique and quilting, beading,
hand embroidery
Materials: hand-dyed and commercial fabrics, seed beads,
embroidery thread
Artist Statement:
'The Song Thrush and the Mountain Ash' is a poem written for the pandemic by the poet laureate of the United Kingdom, Simon Armitage. This piece was made to illustrate the poem for an online and traveling exhibition, called Poetry in Stitches, 'Lockdown', by the National Needlework Archive in the UK. The challenge was to illustrate a published poem about the lockdown.