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QuiltwowCelebrity InterviewCarol Dowsett |
 When did textiles come into your life? | |
When I was 11 years old, whilst on holiday in Blackpool with my parents, I came round a corner on the seafront and saw rolls of fabric stacked up on end outside a shop and was dizzyingly overwhelmed! I made my first garment from red felt, as my mother said this wouldn't fray as I would have to hand stitch it all. It was a circular skirt - but it ended up dolly size when my mother put it into a very hot wash! My next skirt was in yellow cotton and with the same hot wash technique it fell apart at the seams. . . But this didn't deter me. The two pieces shown right and below were embroideries made for a school examination in 1962. |
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How did this passion develop? | |
| My father was keen for me to have a good education (he had to leave school at age 13) and planned out where I would go to college. His idea was that the Royal College of Art would probably be the best, so I applied there with my Scottish Highers and was advised that perhaps a degree at Art College might be an entry into it! So, undeterred, my father found a Couture Fashion College for me to attend in Paris - thinking this would speed my entry to the Royal College. So, at the age of 18, with little French and from a very tiny Scottish village, I landed up in Paris. Can you imagine the culture shock? It was a fantastic opportunity and we had lectures and demonstrations from top designers such as Hubert de Givenchy on the 'perfect sleeve' - if it could be thrown onto the floor and it stood up, it was a 'perfect sleeve'! So a year later I came back to England and was offered a place at Kingston College of Art. A fantastic all round design course, from writing fashion reports to designing knitwear, swimwear and even mink coats! You can see here some of my early fashion sketches, including the mink design on the right. |
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| At the end of my 4th year, I won an RSA bursary to Italy to study shoe design, which I did with my future husband. When I came back, I enrolled on a one year course at Cordwainers Technical College in Hackney (now part of the London College of Fashion) to study shoe design and manufacture. My first job was designing shoes for Italy in a design studio above Browns in South Molton Street, London. Some of the studio sketches are shown right and one of my shoe designs, made up and sold in Italy, is shown below. |
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Having been asked to teach at two London Art colleges, I became freelance and then also did clothing using Courtaulds new fabrics. You can see one of the designs below left and the design made up for Courtaulds below right. |  |
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| Moving out of London meant a big change so I stayed down the teaching of Adults path, which I still do. Teaching City & Guilds patchwork meant a lot of dabbling and experimentation, which I still love and do. Becoming a Verifier for Embroidery and Patchwork meant I threw myself into all disciplines. The current love of computers and their ability to be used as a design source started when I went on a spreadsheet and database course - free to tutors! I couldn't have enrolled on anything more incomprehensible but, along the way, I discovered the Apple Mac which, of course, I fell in love with immediately. At the same time, Val Campbell-Harding was setting up the Computer Textile Design Group. You can see my first computer-designed quilt on the right. It was created on the Mac using Macdraw. 'Courthouse Steps' quilt, designed with Superpaint, is shown below. |
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I am at last having time to concentrate on my own design work and the computer still has number one slot along with my digital camera - oh and, of course, The Tulips! I was commissioned by The Quilters' Guild in 2004 to make a hanging based on my digital tulips for their '25 for 25' permanent collection (see right). Plus I have recently had two of my digital prints - printed onto cotton and hand stitched - accepted into exhibitions which has boosted me tremendously. 'Solarised' was judged into 'Colourfull' at the Arts Centre in Salisbury and 'Solarised' and 'Solarised 2' were shown in the 'Digital Experience' exhibition at Walford Mill, Wimborne, Dorset. 'Solarised' is shown at the top of the article and 'Solarised' 2, shown below, was also juried into the Red House Museum, Open Arts Exhibition, Christchurch. Subsequently, I was awarded a solo exhibition to be held Spring 2008. |
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What now? | |
| One of the delights of being a C&G verifier was the excitement of assessing and discussing the final work with each student and encouraging them to proceed further in different ways. This seems to have followed on in my judging role for the Festival of Quilts for the last couple of years. I am excited by 'innovation' and all new ideas used creatively but, to me, judging is also more than this - it is being able to see the 'vision' that this maker had. With my new PC skills (the Mac is ageing), and needing it to run my Pfaff sewing machine and software, I am now able to take on my new role as Editor of Quiltwow. I feel as if the job has just been waiting for me. Within this new internet magazine, it will be possible to 'showcase' the latest technology in the quilt world, how to bring great textile artists and designer makers along with traditional quilters in our world to the fore, by asking them to do workshops in each issue which lets us enter their world of ideas and inspiration. This seems to have come full circle for me as I am yet again 'dizzyingly overwhelmed' with the possibilities. Needless to say, the Tulips will continue to appear as you can see in the drawing (shown right) and the A3-sized piece of work shown below, which uses drawings transferred to fabric. All my latest work is based on my drawings of tulips, scanned, manipulated, printed onto cloth and hand stitched. |
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