This is the perfect time to begin ordering and assembling those gift ideas for loved ones, family and friends, well before the Christmas rush sets in.

I'll explore thoughtful gifts to delight stitchers from traditional hand embroiderers, through to creative machine embroiderers and experimental textile artists.

Fill this festive season with artistry that reminds you of connection, creativity and joy - all centred around the use of a simple needle and thread - one of the oldest tools known to man.

Show Notes: https://stitchsafari.com/christmas-gift-g…-textile-artists/

This is the fascinating history of Khayamiya - a lavishly decorative textile art that was originally used for tents, palace interiors and ceremonial pavilions and one that continues in the bustling market of Sharia Khayamiya or, as we know it, the 'Street of the Tentmakers', where skilled artisans continue to create dazzlingly intricate and colourful stitched panels, that have evolved into wall hangings and other cherished collector's items now often made for the tourist industry. We need to be reminded that embroidery and the textile arts not only serve aesthetic and functional purposes, but are also the profound carriers of cultural heritage. These panels, cushions, cloths or spreads are not relics of the past but the embodiment of a living practice that has an enduring power.

Show Notes: https://stitchsafari.com/khayamiya-the-tentmakers-of-cairo/

In this lively episode of the Stitch Safari Podcast, I'm celebrating the quirky, personal, rule-breaking world of Idisyncratic Embroidery. This is the space where individuality thrives, where traditions are bent or broken, and where embroidery becomes a deeply personal language of expression.

Rules, patterns and expectations become blurred with stitches finding themselves wandering every which way, where colour choices are meant to surprise or challenge and where compositions tend to make you want to stop and think.

Join me as I explore four embroidery artists who break rules or use a technique unexpectedly, but to my mind, that only enriches and enhances the world of embroidery as they explore and develop.

Show Notes: https://stitchsafari.com/idiosyncratic-em…daring-to-differ/