Embroidery Magazine

3 January 2024

The January/February issue of Embroidery Magazine brings a fresh sweep and a plethora of opportunities. We have teamed up with Brother to create The Brother Creative Machine Embroidery Challenge with the opportunity for two artists to experiment with Brother’s latest tech for a period of four months, to push the capabilities of these machines and move their practice in new directions. With an abundance of other opportunities and competitions in this issue, it’s a ‘must read’. Elsewhere, we preview the year ahead, catch up with the winners of the Hand & Lock Prize for Embroidery and meet an artist whose home has probably the most anarchic interior in London. French fancies are served up by Severine Gallardo whose towering narrative headdresses have eclectic inspiration, while Anna Perach, an Israeli artist now living in the UK, discusses the new direction of her work and her research into historical medicine and witchcraft. There are pieces, too, on the beauty of avian stitch, the zinging colours of the Caribbean in raffia art and the new qualification set to shake up the world of embroidery. And, if the winter blues are setting in, we preview a few of the enticing retreats planned for 2024. We also meet the FATA award-winner, preview an exhibition with 100 political works at the Barbican and discover ‘Meteobotany’. Just what is it? Finally, our cover features the author of Forage & Stitch, a new book that sets out to inspire us with fresh ways to use foraged finds from the natural world in our art. The depths of winter have never looked so evocative.