Touchlines - 62 Group - Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley

Louise Baldwin - The moments that I can't recall (detail), 2026 

 

Touchlines: The Delicate Boundaries of Care and Cloth is this year's 62 Group exhibition at Sunny Bank Mills in Farsley.  In Touchlines, we are told, "artists explore the subtle thresholds where contact is felt, withheld, or transformed. Set within the historic spaces of Sunny Bank Mills, the exhibition draws connections between textile labour, sporting cultures, and human relationships, asking how boundaries shape intimacy, care, and collective identity."

Here are some of my favourites...

Using old tickets, books, cards, packaging etc., Louise Baldwin has created a new work of layered relationships...

Louise Baldwin - The moments that I can't recall, 2026
Collected paper, card, and fabric elements with wood and beads; machine-stitched modules, hand stitching and glued construction

Debbie Lyddon's The Breath of the Moon maps the contours of a day's tides. The title comes from the Venerable Bede, who noticed a connection between the moon and tides and called it the breathings of the moon.  I love the title of this piece.

Debbie Lyddon - The Breath of the Moon, 2026
Linen, beeswax, linseed oil, wire, pulled threads, machine and hand stitch

Hannah Lamb makes the point that "duty of care" often misses out caring for the carers.  The patching and darning on this piece represents self care as the apron disintegrates. Perhaps it's time to re-evaluate who we value in society...

Hannah Lamb -  Duty of Care II, 2022
Vintage linen apron, silk organza, applique, hand stitch, machine stitch, devore

Helen Davies tells us that sometimes the only way to effect change is through disorder and nothing unites a community like a common goal.  Her work references the 1842 General Strike where workers across Lancashire & Yorkshire unplugged the boilers in mills and factories...

Helen Davies - National Union of Had Enough of This Shite, 2026
Cotton thread, synthetic thread

Helen Banzhaf's coat shows how important it is for pattern pieces to fit together to create the final form...

Helen Banzhaf - Salad Servers and the Odd Fish Slice, 2026
10 oz unprimed cotton canvas, assembled as a coat using various threads with stitched applique shapes

Hazel Bruce uses an old linen roller towel as a background for patches of colour and stitch to give it a new life...

Hazel Bruce - The beginning of something new? 2025
Huckaback linen roller towel, reclaimed fabric remnants, machine stitch

In Eszter Bornemisza's piece, her people are made of map fragments and linked by a network of streets, representing human connectedness...

Eszter Bornemisza - Icon-Maze, 2023
Organza, vintage ribbons, newsprint, tissue, threads, printing, cutting machine stitching

Helen Yardley uses the game of rugby as her inspiration with the physicality of the friction and pressure of the game echoed in her medium and representation...

 

Helen Yardley - Lineout, 2026
Cut and pieced 3mm industrial wool felt, hand stitched, screen printed, machine stitched and hand painted. Mounted onto a wooden stretcher frame.

Claire Barber's piece, part of which is shown below, made of melted shoelaces, heather and chalk represents how plastics infiltrate out environment...

Claire Barber - Sweepings (detail), 2026
Melted shoelaces, heather, chalk, stone, pins, broom, sugar palm fibres

Hannah White's work, through electroforming, transforms something soft into something rigid and she sees this as a metaphor for building human resilience over time...

Hannah White - Woven Touchlines, 2026
Woven, hand pleated and hand stitched, Trevira and stainless-steel threads, electroformed, nickel-plated

Mei Lock says her parents demonstrate their love through what they do rather than what they say.  Here, using her parents' clothes and one of her Mum's recipes, she demonstrates their actions of love and care...

 

Mei Lock - Love Languages, 2026
Cotton apron, denim jeans, wooden chair spindles and thread, hand stitch

And finally, with humour but also with a point, here is Lynn Setterington's Gary on the Touchline. The traditional twee subjects of needlepoint are subverted and we have instead, Gary Lineker, a pundit as famous for his humanitarian views on refugees and asylum seekers as his football commentary. The question is, will Lynn Setterington ever stitch it?

Lynn Setterington - Gary on the Touchline, 2026
Canvas work print with coloured threads

And because everyone wants to touch everything but can't - there is a touching table...

Samples that could be examined and touched

There were, of course, many other interesting works too. The exhibition runs until 31st May 2026, on the 3rd floor, in the 1912 Mill at Sunny Bank Mills, 83-85 Town Street, Farsley, West Yorkshire, LS28 5UJ. Open Thursday-Sunday 10am to 4pm. Go see.  

There are cafes at Sunny Bank Mills, various shops and a ScrapStore.  It's a great place to visit.  Check opening hours before visiting.

Making As Learning - The Sixty Two Group - Salt's Mill, Saltaire

Jae Maries - Widening Horizons

 

The Sixty Two Group's recent exhibition Making as Learning has now finished in the roof space at Salt's Mill in Saltaire.  We are told that "The theme 'Making as Learning' was inspired by and dedicated to former 62 Group member Audrey Walker MBE (1928-2020), both as an educator and artist.  The exhibition explores the role of making and learning in our creative practice.  Members interrogate their textile practices, unravelling working processes and inspirations as part of a continuing journey of discovery." 

Jan Beaney - Transience

There was some great work on display and here are just some of my top picks.  I am drawn to mixed media pieces, assemblages and texture so expect to see a preponderance of such works.

Jae Maries's shoreline scene (top image) experiments with new techniques, materials and approaches to her textile art.  Off cuts from a visual diary and old work make up the boardwalk. I love the movement and texture in this piece.

Jan Beaney's Transience (above) is inspired by Charmouth beach and the eroding and etched stone surfaces revealed at low tide.  You just want to run your hands over this to feel the uneven surfaces.

Ann Goddard - Collection #2 (Collaged Constructions) detail

Ann makes constructions from rusty objects, natural materials, recycled artworks and other items from her stash.  She experiments with these materials and I am fascinated by the results.

Eszter Bornemisza - Delve and Discover

Eszter experiemnts with new materials and techniques as a matter of course to turn her ideas into something tangible.  Distortion, layering and transparency are all techniques employed in her joined up samples here.

Gavin Fry - Unfinished Symphony II

Gavin's assemblage of handstitching and found objects is an expression of the foregrounding of touch over practicality.  This is a particularly pleasing, curious piece.

Jane McKeating - Flight Path

Jane McKeating's work is a connection between the story she is telling (what is happening in the world beneath a flight path) and the materials she chooses to experiment with to tell it (roller blind fabric, printing, gouache and inks)

Hannah Lamb - Inheritance

Hannah's cyanotypes and textile making is something she has learned through making, through watching others, through doing and undoing to gain knowledge which she can now pass on to her students whilst also recognising that she can also learn things from them.

Helen Yardley - Cerise Wall Felt & Cornish Grey Wall Felt

Helen Yardley's colourful wall felts are decorative acoustic wallhangings inspired by Matisse's collage with added paint, print and stitch.  I love the stitched elements of these simple abstract pieces.  They are quite wonderful.

Debbie Lydon - Findings (out)

Debbie Lydon collects found objects with which she experiments through manipulation, treatments and reworking.  They may be stitched, waxed, painted, glued, bound, suspended or contained and remain her learning experiments rather than finished pieces.  I love them.

Shuna Rendel - Spinning out of control

Experimenting with apple prunings, bark and maize husks, Shuna has experimented with her materials to create a piece inspired by the mill setting in which it is exhibited.  She is hoping to evoke a picture of bobbins of wool with trailing threads.

Sue Stone - Integrated detail

Sue's piece, Integrated, is a collage of digital prints of previous works which have then been worked on with hand and machine stitching to provide extra detail. A combination of traditional and modern techniques, they are hung so you can see this stitching clearly on the reverse as another layer, and almost another work. 

Lucy Brown - Loss (Ball 'n' Tress) detail

Made from the artist's hand spun hair tresses and handmade hairballs, Lucy Brown's piece references the mill's spinning room.  In fact Lucy taught herself to spin using her own hair to create the piece.

A selection of pieces from this exhibition will be on display at the Knitting and Stitching Show in Harrogate so you may have seen them there if you missed them at Salt's Mill.

The 62 Group - Tailored - Sunny Bank Mills, Farsley, West Yorkshire

 

Sian Martin - Process (detail) & Hannah Lamb - Deconstructed Shirt (detail)

The 62 Group, a renowned textile art collective, are currently exhibiting at Sunny Bank Mills with an exhibition entitled - Tailored.  The work in Tailored explores multiple meanings and interpretations of the word itself and what it means to the individual artists’ practice. Some artists consider the process of making and elements of it; the design and weaving of cloth and the pattern, pinning, cutting and sewing of a garment. Other artists take a more narrative and personal approach to the meaning. The techniques used include stitch, knit, casting, drawing and film; sculpture and installation.  The exhibition is also a celebration of 10 years of culture at Sunny Bank Mills where cloth was produced that was used primarily in the making of suits.

I'm going to give you a whistlestop tour through some of my favourites...

Sian Martin - Process

Sian Martin's Process (above & detail at top) is inspired by one of the mill workers at Sunny Bank Mills and Sians's own beginnings in dressmaking.  Sian was fascinated by tailor tacks and their ability to transfer marks through layers of cloth.  This piece celebrates those traditional dressmaking skills.   Also the repetitive and rhythmic stitching of this piece celebrates that stage in the process of making a tailored garment.

Hannah Lamb - Deconstructed Shirt & Dressing Up

Hannah Lamb's work is always interesting.  Taking a vintage man's shirt, with it's overtones of  masculinity, formality and appropriateness, Hannah has used a devore technique to deconstruct it and to question whether those overtones are valid or a camouflage behind which someone is hiding.  In Dressing Up, Hannah has developed this theme further using cyanotype imagery of the Deconstructed Shirt to suggest the different layers of our private and public selves.  The mannequin between the images offers a different body image playing with ideas of size, gender and identity.  Are we dressing to fit in or express our true selves?

 

Hannah White - Fluidity & Rigidity: No 4 

Hannah White "tailors" her weaving into a customised, sculpted form using conductive threads and a process called electroforming. This creates a metal skeleton on the conductive threads around which the fabric folds. Hannah describes this as engineering with thread.  I don't pretend to know how this actually works but would like to know more about the process and even see it in action.  The results are impressive.

Teresa Whitfield - Woollen Stockings for the Mending Girl

Teresa Whitfield was inspired by a circular knitting machine at Sunny Bank Mills.  Typically they were used for knitting worsted stockings but the one here in Farsley was actually used for knitting dyed samples that would be used for the woven cloth.  Here she imagines it used for knitting some stockings for one of the female mill workers and wonders about their living and working conditions and the inequalities of the textile industry.  Her work is a drawing of knitted fabric.  Teresa sees a parallel between the repetitive and meditative act of drawing knitting and of the act of knitting itself.

Shuna Rendel - Thread in the Air (detail)

Shuna Rendel has the Asian tailorbird as her inspiration.  This small creature stitches together leaves using spiders' web or plant fibres to make a cradle for its nest.  Shuna has created a series of possible cradle variations using avocado skins, vine tendrils, gladioli sepals, vetch pods and waxed linen thread.

Ann Goddard  - Tailor-Made

Ann Goddard was also inspired by the tailorbird and by the bespoke clothing made by Master Tailors.  Both the bird and the Master Tailors create something that will blend into the environment of the user.  Here Ann used the pockets of a pinstripe suit, the fabric of which was similar to that woven at Sunny Bank Mills, as the cradle for the nest which is represented by the abaca fibre inside.  The suit used was made by Master Tailor Beno Dorn who btw made the first suits worn by the Beatles.

There are plenty of other interesting pieces in the exhibition.  This is just a small taster.  You'll have to be quick to catch this one as it closes on 2 July 2023.  Do go if you get the chance.

Sunny Bank Mills is a great place to visit.  Apart from the Gallery and shop on site, there are various cafes, a Scrap Shop, the Sunny Bank Mills Archive, artists studios, shops and more.  There's also plenty of car parking.

Harrogate Knitting & Stitching Show 2022 - Textile Galleries - Part 2 - The 62 Group & The Fine Art Textiles Award

Ann Goddard - Microcosm

It's 60 years since the 62 Group was established.  Their aims were to promote textile art, to be shown in prestigious venues, to be well publicised and to be taken seriously, on a par with other fine art practices.  In this exhibition - Essence - members were asked to present work that reflected the "essence" of their textile practice.  Each work could be no larger than 30x30x30cm.  

Shuna Rendel - Cycles of Time

It was a great exhibition & here I'm sharing with you some of my favourite pieces from it.  If you head over to the 62 Group website you can watch the Essence film where the artists talk about their work.  It's well worth watching.

Maggie Henton - Kept in Place

Hannah Lamb - The Garden Within

Heather Belcher - Becoming Undone

Caren Garfen - Babes in the Wood

Debbie Lyddon - Sand & Salt Bag

Helen Banzhaf - Three in a Row

The Fine Art Textiles Award supported by the Open College of the Arts recognises the creative talents and skills of exceptional textile artists.  These are the pieces that caught my attention... 

Jane Walkley - Rhythm of the Weave 3 

Jane Walkley's piece used clay impressions of mill artefacts that were then cast in jesmonite together with mill debris. These were then included in her woven piece trying to capture the repetitive rhythm of a mill worker's daily experience.

Judith E Martin - Underfoot the Earth Divine

Judith E Martin's piece was inspired by the vast rural Canadian landscape. Her dyed, machined pieced fabrics were hand quilted, resembling a ploughed field. 

Marian Jazmik - Stems & Stalks

Marian Jazmik's abstract textile art, using a variety of synthetic materials, free machine embroidery and heat treatment, is inspired by the shapes and textures of the natural environment captured through her macro photography.

The exhibitions at the Knitting & Stitching Show are always inspirational you can read my other blog post about the textile galleries here.