We heard from one of our members, Claire, who shared her work. In common with the previous meeting’s speakers, her work underlines the impressive range of skills and experience in BETA.
Claire is a textile artist who was a creative child and who studied Fashion and Textiles in Birmingham. She developed a love of printed textiles, but worked for many years as a special needs teacher, eventually moving to part time work to change the balance in her life, allowing more time for creativity.
Claire eventually displayed her work in a RSBA exhibition, winning a prize and selling some pieces. This gave her the confidence to become a free lance artist. She learnt computer skills to support her pattern making and to produce her work and was able to sell her prints. One design that sold was notably used in Huggies Wet Wipes. This work was however competitive and not well paid. Claire emphasized in her talk the importance of not just working to outcomes, but to also taking the time to play and use a range of projects to develop ideas. She is also a believer in hoarding to provide sources of inspiration.
Claire taught textiles at MAC and has used a range of approaches including foiling, screen printing, ecodying, mono printing and batik. She also uses embroidery and free machine stitching. Claire was also an artist in residence at Winterborne teaching painting drawing and stitch there. Sadly this coincided with Covid and prevented her final exhibition taking place but Winterbourne and beautiful gardens more generally remain a significant source of inspiration. Claire uses sketch books including books from her time at Winterbourne to provide inspiration.She has also drawn on her travels, most notably a trip to Malaysia and a hanging resulting from that trip is shown below. She is hoping in the future to also develop work based on a trip t Japan.
Claire and Ioves painting and collage with a particular fondness for Tulips. Further examples of her lovely work are shown below
Some images of members enjoying looking through her work are also shown.
Claire is running a workshop for BETA members on March 28th 2026 where members can explore stitch on a coloured background, or on webbed fabric. Her description of the day was very enticing. She is also running a session at MAC on Sat 14th March ‘Threaded Trees from 10am to 4pm.
At February’s meeting we also held our regular raffle the colour was orange and the lovely bags were completed by Linda and Marion.
Our next meeting on 9th March 2026 is an activity evening with sessions run by committee members and the raffle colour will be yellow. Please bring contributions if you can. Winners may be able to use the contents to add to thier hoards as Claire suggests.
Birmingham Embroidery and Textile Art 