Ahead of Lustre, our nationally renowned craft and design market, we spoke to artist Helen Foot, who creates beautiful handwoven textiles. With a strong sense of colour and a commitment to keeping heritage techniques alive, Helen's designs bring a fresh perspective to time honoured processes.
How do new ideas emerge for you and what is your process for developing them into finished pieces?
“For me, ideas often begin with colour. I can be inspired by almost anything: a bird’s plumage, the vegetables growing in my garden, an old photograph, a painting, a landscape or even a combination of colours I’ve spotted somewhere completely unexpected. I’m fascinated by the way colours sit alongside one another and how changing one thread can completely alter the character of a piece.
Once an idea catches my attention, I collect colour references and experiment with yarn. For my Avian Collection, for example, I study photographs of birds and create little yarn windings to work out how I can translate those colours into woven cloth. From there, I work out the warp, calculate the yarn quantities, dress the loom and start weaving.
The process is carefully planned, but there is always an element of discovery. Colours that look right on a winding can behave quite differently when they are woven together. The finished piece is a conversation between the original inspiration, careful planning and the unexpected things that happen during the making.”
What do you enjoy most about the materials you work with?
“I love yarn because of its potential. A single thread can look completely ordinary in isolation, but put it alongside another colour, change the structure of the weave or alter the proportion, and suddenly it becomes something completely different.
I’m particularly drawn to wool. I love its versatility, but I also value it as a natural fibre. At a time when we’re increasingly aware of the environmental impact of petrochemical based fibres, I think there is real value in working with natural materials and making things that are designed to last.
Wool has warmth, resilience, texture and drape, and responds beautifully to colour. I also like the way it connects my work to a much longer tradition of textile making. For me, using wool isn’t about recreating the past, but taking a traditional material and process and using them to create something contemporary.
I also love the physicality of weaving. There is something incredibly satisfying about winding hundreds of individual threads, setting up the loom and gradually watching them become cloth. Even after all these years, I still get a little thrill when the finished cloth comes off the loom.”
What feelings do you hope your artworks bring to their eventual owners and users?
“I hope they bring joy.
Colour has a huge emotional impact and that is one of the reasons I’m so fascinated by it. I want my pieces to make someone stop and look, perhaps notice a colour combination they wouldn’t normally have chosen, and then discover that they keep coming back to it.
Because I make scarves and other textiles designed to be used, I love the idea that they become part of someone’s everyday life. They aren’t precious objects that have to sit behind glass. They can be worn, touched and wrapped around you, eventually becoming associated with memories and places.
I hope my work brings a little colour, pleasure and personality into someone’s day.”
Could you tell us about what you are working on at the moment?
“There is quite a lot happening in the studio at the moment! I’m still working on my Avian Collection, which continues to grow in rather unexpected directions. I’ve just finished weaving a Jackdaw colourway and have a Blue Tit warp ready to go on the loom, so there are plenty more feathers making their way into my work.
Alongside the Avian scarves, I’m developing a new collection of lightweight cotton scarves, which I’m planning to launch in spring. They will be quite different from the woollen scarves I’ve been concentrating on recently, so I’m enjoying experimenting with a lighter cloth and thinking about how to bring my love of colour into something with a completely different feel.
And then there is a slightly unexpected collaboration that came out of a local Artisan Showcase I took part in back in May. I’ve recently been working with Jenny, one of the lovely makers I met there, to create a collection of teddy bears made using my handwoven fabrics.
The first ones are looking rather fabulous, and I’m really enjoying seeing my woven fabrics transformed into something completely different. I never set out to make teddy bears, but that’s one of the things I love about being a maker: sometimes an idea appears unexpectedly over a chat and a cup of tea and turns out to be too good not to follow.
So, alongside the scarves, there are currently birds, cotton shade cards, teddy bears and quite a lot of yarn occupying the studio. It may be autumn outside, but there is definitely plenty of colour going on in here.”
Meet Helen and see her beautiful designs at Lustre on 6th -8th November. Entry is free. Find out more.
To see more of Helen’s incredible work, visit his website here.
