What a great meeting, with a brilliant speaker. Karina graduated from her Textile Design degree at Birmingham City University in 2023. Whilst there she learnt a range of techniques and was helped to move beyond her comfort zone. She was involved in designing patterns for the volunteers at the Commonwealth Games in the city. During the course Karina became increasingly interested in textural work, with hand stitching and beads, central elements. She also developed an interest in sustainability, using background fabrics that are naturally dyed. Karina began to focus on thinking about nature including coral reefs and likes using strong colours in her work. As part of her development she was awarded a placement in a couture company, working on bespoke stitching for bridal gowns where she increased her skill and knowledge.
On graduation Karina won two awards, including the bespoke textile award. Her final exhibition was entitled Roots of Remembrance and drew on the beauty of medicinal plants, particularly those relevant to the treatment of dementia. The first piece below ‘Bacopa’s beauty’ is based on the Bacopa plant which she explained benefits cognitive functioning . Her pieces made use of other skills including gold work. The headdress shown below used a lot of stump work and drew in traditional folklore as well, with the use of snowdrops to relieve pain. This headpiece entitled ‘making the unseen seen’ represented the healing process in the brain. Finally there an image shown of a beautiful piece of stitching using plant structures and relevant chemical symbols.
It is hard to capture how much we enjoyed this talk. To meet a young embroiderer who has such highly developed skills and such fascinating thinking and conceptualisation behind her work was a real privilege. Karina was also a confident, engaging and knowledgeable speaker and her passion for her work was inspiring. We all wish her well and would love to hear in the future about the next steps in her stitch journey.
We also held our yellow raffle with the large bag made by Jayne and the small bag by Bernadette. Our next meeting features Jo Hall a lecturer in textiles and the raffle bag is green, contributions would be appreciated.
Birmingham Embroidery and Textile Art 