Making Nettle Paper

My homemade nettle paper

 

Recently I've been making nettle paper with my daughter and the help of Helen Cook's pamphlet - Making Paper from Stinging Nettles.  To be honest, I got to do the fun bit.  My daughter had already picked the nettles, striped them, soaked and retted them.

Helen Cook - Making Paper from Stinging Nettles

We took the retted nettle fibre...

Retted Nettle Fibre

and with some tweakments added it to a washing up bowl of water...

Our equipment - nettle fibre, washing up bowl and water, scissors, mould and deckle

and then scooped up the nettle fibre with the mould and deckle...

Mould and deckle with nettle fibre

The soon to be paper was then tipped out onto a tea towel and sandwiched between some felt.  Then you have to apply something heavy to squeeze the water out...

Something heavy must be applied to squeeze the water out

Then the paper is left to dry... 

You have to peel off the dried paper from whatever it's drying on...

And there you have it - paper from stinging nettles.  I think we need to refine our mould and deckle technique to get a more consistent thickness of paper that covers the whole mould without any holes in the sheet of paper...  

Nettle paper of varying thicknesses

I plan to do some stitching in my nettle paper.  Watch this space...

Delcy Morelos - origo - Barbican, London

Delcy Morelos - origo

 

Delcy Morelos is a Columbian artist who makes all of her artworks by hand.  Her large installation, origo, made of soil, was outside the Barbican, London, until the end of July 2026.  

Meaning origin in latin, origo, was inspired by Andean and Amazonian traditional world views.  The material it was formed from, soil/earth, is seen as life giving and receiving, where food is grown and bodies are buried - the cycle of life.

Delcy Morelos - origo surface

It was 24m wide and took 10 tonnes of earth and clay that was applied over a month by Morelos and her team.  It consisted of a mixture of cinnamon, cloves, hay, soil and clay (and perhaps a little concrete?). It was rock hard and was applied over a wooden structure. 

Polo shaped, though more elliptical than round, part of it is like a tunnel/cave that you can walk through.  Internally it is quite dark and plant matter hangs down from the sides. Morelos calls the cave like structures within origo, profundis, and these are deemed to resemble burial sites.  Morelos sees the installation as both monumental (in scale) and humble (in terms of its materials). 

Delcy Morelos - Inside origo

It is pierced by a number of trapezoidal doorways into the structure and through it. (see first and last images) 

Origo appears suspended as though it is hovering just above ground level...

Delcy Morelos - Floating origo

The installation and the Barbican bear the traces of touch and a shared texture - origo by its handmade nature, and the Barbican with its rough concrete finish.

I got to see origo at the end of its show and would have liked to have seen it in the making too.  (And I would've liked to have tried climbing on it but that wasn't allowed).  It would have been even more impressive if it was twice the height and made entirely of soil and clay but I imagine time, resources and health & safety concerns probably precluded that.

Twined Pod Forms with Spiral Patterns - Mary Crabb

My finished pod forms

 

Recently I went on a course, led by Mary Crabb, to learn how to create twined pod forms with spiral patterns.  It was one of West Dean College's short courses at their Bloomsbury Campus in London.

Mary Crabb

Mary Crabb's pod forms with spiral patterns

Mary is a skilled basketmaker. Having started out working in willow, Mary now makes small woven creations using both natural and man-made materials to create detailed, decorative forms using twining, looping and coiling techniques.

Mary Crabb's pod forms with some more complicated spiral patterns

We were here to learn how to make twined forms with a spiral pattern which Mary demonstrated for us and also provided notes as an aide memoire.  We worked with paper yarn in a range of colours using thicker yarn for the warp and thinner yarn for the weft.

Thick paper yarn (used for the warp) and thin paper yarn (used for the weft)

We started by making a small simple sample to get the hang of the process.  Here's mine...

My sample

After that we moved on to our main piece of the day which had a spiral pattern.  I opted to do a simple spiral but other participants were more adventurous and went for wider 4 colour spirals which Mary explained.

My simple spiral pod form

We also began another piece which I finished at home with a slightly more adventurous two row spiral...

My pod form with a deeper spiral

At the end of the day we put our pod forms out so everyone could have a look...

Everyone's pod forms

It was a super day and although progress was slow as it often is with handmade craft, it was very enjoyable.  Thank you, Mary and West Dean.

My initial sample finished as a small pod form with a simple spiral

Yorkshire & Humber Embroidery Group (YHEG) Summer School - July 2026

 

My finished piece from Rebekah Johnston's workshop

Every year the Yorkshire & Humber Embroiderers' Group (YHEG) organise a residential Summer School at Bishop Burton College near Beverley, East Yorkshire. It is a two and a half day stitching extravaganza. This year there were 4 workshop streams to choose from, each led by a different tutor.  This year's tutors were:

Rebekah Johnston - The Fabric of Home

Toni Buckby - Introduction to Historic Blackwork Embroidery 

Rachael Singleton - Re-Imagined

Kate Slaughter - Waxing Lyrical with Colour and Print

I am a member of YHEG but this is the first year I have been to Summer School. I took Rebekah Johnston's workshop.

Examples of Rebekah Johnston's work

Rebekah Johnston - The Fabric of Home
Rebekah is a Nottingham based textile artist working with repurposed domestic fabrics and natural dyes to create quilts and textile pieces rooted in memory, resilience and a sense of home. Her practice combines hand-stitching, needle-turn and raw edged applique, boro inspired mending, darning methods, distressing fabrics, as well as quilt construction and binding methods.

Rebekah's natural dyed fabric & threads & commercial threads for us to use 

Rebekah’s workshop was inspired by her quilt project “The Fabric of Home”, which explored the meaning of home through cloth, memory, and repair. Images of the quilt and examples of her work were at the summer school to introduce the theme and activities of the weekend.

My piece (see top photo) was based on a repeating theme of a window in my house. Other participants'work from Rebekah's workshop can be seen below...

 Some of the participants' work from Rebecca Johnston's workshop

At the end of the weekend everyone lays their work out and we get a chance to go round and see what everyone has done in the different workshops. As a bit of background here's a little about the other tutors and what each workshop offered, taken from the Summer School info...

Toni Buckby - Introduction to Historic Blackwork Embroidery 
Toni Buckby is a Sheffield based artist working with traditional textile techniques, experimental digital/electronics, and acts of collective making. Her work explores ideas of skilled practice, the value of labour, the visibility of authorship, and the creation and accessibility of practical knowledge. Specialising in fine hand embroidery, Toni is currently undertaking a PhD with Sheffield Hallam University and the Victoria & Albert Museum, investigating how fine art practice can be used to reconstruct, interpret, and present fragile and inaccessible Blackwork embroideries.

The summer school project consisted of one of Toni's Historic Blackwork Kits with pre-printed fabric, embroidery threads and needles.

Some of the participants' work from Toni Buckby's workshop

Rachael Singleton - Re-Imagined
Rachael Singleton is an experimental textile and mixed media artist living in South Yorkshire. Her work brings together creative thought and practical engagement with a variety of materials. Layering forms her signature process through the use of varied materials in order to make her ideas come to life.  She is inspired by the natural world. 

Working with a well known favourite painting, students ‘mined’ their images of it for various visual elements, collecting a bank of patterns to translate onto cloth. The aim was to create a range of samples that could be reconstructed into abstracted designs by either hand or machine stitching.

Some of the participants' work from Rachael Singleton's workshop

Kate Slaughter - Waxing Lyrical with Colour and Print
Kate Slaughter is a textile artist, dyer, and tutor who takes inspiration from the beautiful flowers and landscapes of Northumberland and Cumbria. She creates hand painted yarns and threads in a range of colours, adding unique texture and character to her designs.

Kate's workshop taught students how to transform plain fabrics with surface decorative techniques including wax crayons, bondaweb, inktense ink blocks, transfer paints and wooden printing blocks. Participants were also encouraged to add additional surface decoration using simple hand embroidery with a range of different threads and yarns. 

Some of the participants' work from Kate Slaughter's workshop

Kate also had some very colourful threads and kits for sale...

Kate Slaughter's Kits & Threads 

Apart from the luxury of two and a half days stitching with like-minded souls there was good food (Yorkshire portions), a superb walled garden and pleasant accommodation.  Thank you to the fab tutors and to Pauline and the other YHEG organisers - it was a great weekend!  

It was the heatwave weekend so it was very hot.  Afterwards I took myself off to Bridlington for a swim and an ice cream which was the perfect end to a very enjoyable Summer School...

Bridlington South Beach

Refreshment after a swim

Stitched Coffee Pod Flower Collage Workshop

My Stitched Coffee Pod Flower Collages

This weekend I visited the Quilters' Guild Contemporary Textiles group Region 14 (Cleveland & Yorkshire) to lead a workshop for them entitled Stitched Coffee Pod Flower Collage Workshop.  The aim was to show how used coffee pods could be manipulated into some basic flower shapes which, with a bit of design work, could then be turned into a stitched collage. You can see some of my examples above.

Coffee pods, prepped and ready to use

I had prepped plenty of coffee pods for everyone to use in a whole array of colours.  All the coffee grounds I had removed from them been added to my garden compost! And there were plenty of threads, buttons and beads available too...

Threads, buttons & beads

Coffee pods sorted by colour

And after some coffee pod manipulation demonstrations, everyone got going...

Workshop participants flower shapes in the making

Some great new ideas emerged from cutting, hammering and the use of pliers.

At the end of the day, some fabulous collages had been created.  One Young Quilter, had been particularly imaginative to great effect...

Here is the fabulous work of the other participants...

I was really impressed with everyone's ideas and creativity - what a super group!  Thank you Contemporary Textiles for inviting me along.