In September ‘23 our visiting speaker was Emily Tull.  She graduated in 2000 as a painter and her training was in fine art, even though her family were seamstresses!  She has exhibited widely, and won many awards. In 2006 she made first stitched piece - a sketched portrait in black thread, she wanted more detail than she was achieving in paint.
In 2008 inspired by Egyptian tomb paintings, she began to use scraps of muslin and hessian to show the remaining pieces of the pictures and achieve a fragmented look.  The size and shape of the fabric pieces were defined by the sections of the faces left.
In 2010 she started to look at wildlife, which lent itself to using a wider range of threads and to achieve a more layered effect.
She has worked with wallpaper fragments in her portraits and also patterned fabrics that look like wallpaper.  These portraits are what she is well known for, and she showed us this technique in the workshop after lunch.
She always starts with the eyes, and finishes with the hair as it can be done quickly at the end!
She works closely with the person/subject to capture as much of the personality as possible
Emily was very generous with her slides showing a great variety of her work, and we enjoyed an afternoon of trying to create a portrait ourselves using pieces of wallpaper and thread.
She is co-founder of S.E.W - Society for Embroidered Work, supporting and promoting artists who have a stitched element to their work.
Further information here: https://www.emilytull.co.uk/