Mandy Pattullo: From conception to creation

Mandy Pattullo is a textile artist based in rural Northumberland. She sources local vintage quilts, embroidery and other fabrics, collaging them together into exciting new pieces, each telling their own story.

Some of these rescued materials are disintegrated, worn or mended with hand stitching. She unpicks and reconstructs them and then adds to their interest by embellishing, making new surface textures with embroidery stitches. Her collages become stand-alone pieces, are applied to garments or collected into a book structure. Mandy’s aim is to preserve discarded textiles by converting them into beautiful new patchworks incorporating their history, told through the visible signs of wear and tear.

Mandy spent many years teaching in an art college and in the last ten years she has focussed on her creative practice. Her work is based on references to historical textiles and traditional techniques. She explores the importance of local folk traditions and sewing generated in domestic settings. Today she teaches many workshops both nationally and internationally and is a member of The Textile Study Group.

In this interview discover how Mandy Pattullo creates her ‘scrap’ books for her own use, almost as a self-indulgence. She uses collage and embroidery to build layers of texture and colour on fabric background pages, using waste fabric fragments. She creates her stitched books to remind her of previous projects and inspire new ones. Her technique inspires us all to make the most of every last scrap of fabric and avoid waste, building a more sustainable practice.