If you live close to Lincoln or are visiting on 3rd March 2026.
Lucy and I would love to see you at the Private View of our exhibition 5 pm – 7 pm.
Exhibition runs from 3rd to 15th March.
Join Us for a Private View in Lincoln
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Category Archives: stitch
Join Sue Stone’s Weekend Workshop in Cardiff
I am delighted to announce that tickets are now on sale for my weekend workshop ‘People & their Stories‘. It will take place on 26 & 27 April 2025 at Beth Morris Workshops in Cardiff.
Spaces are limited so please sign up now to secure your place. I am looking forward to meeting you in Cardiff next Spring!
About the weekend workshop
This 2 day workshop, ‘People & their Stories’ will introduce you to creating illustrative, stitched portraits using hand stitch and appliqué.
My teaching style is one of individual, personal tuition throughout the workshop. I will start by guiding you through the straightforward techniques that I use in my work.
I will also bring a collection of my small works and personal samples. You can use them as inspiration for your own work.
The workshop is suitable for all abilities and will include:
- How to transform your own drawings or photos into a starting point for a stitched piece
- How to get started using uncomplicated techniques of image transfer to fabric
- Drawing with simple stitches, like back stitch and running stitch
- Using sampling to help decide on techniques and designs
- Exploring appliqué techniques
- How to add simple background details like text to help tell your subject’s story.
By the end of the workshop, you’ll have begun a small portrait to continue at home. You will also be equipped with skills to develop your own figurative work further.
Your portrait can be of a real or imaginary person. They can be known or unknown to you. Each picture has its own story to tell.
Pre-Workshop Preparation
Materials and fabrics will be provided but please feel free to bring some of your own favourite fabrics and threads. This will give you a deeper connection to your work.
The aim of the workshop is for you to produce work that is personal to you. It’s also helpful if you choose colours that love and which suit your starting image.
Please bring a choice of your own drawings or photographs to use as inspiration. I will send you some guidelines for selecting and adapting suitable images before the workshop.
Important: If you are a beginner, you should choose a simple starting photograph or drawing like those shown below.
About Sue Stone
My work is inspired by people and places. I’m best known for textural, figurative work which tells a story. My emphasis is on hand embroidery, often mixed with machine stitch, appliqué, and paint.
I have exhibited my work widely throughout the UK and Europe. I have also exhibited in Australia, Japan, Pakistan, and the USA.
I have taught ‘in person’ workshops throughout the UK, and in France, USA and Canada. I also teach online courses for textileartist.org which is run by my two sons Joe & Sam Pitcher.
Don’t forget to add these dates to your diary!
The workshop will take place on 26 & 27 April 2025 at Beth Morris Workshops in Cardiff.
Sign up now to secure your place on my ‘People and Their Stories’ weekend workshop.
I am looking forward to meeting you in Cardiff next Spring!
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Retrospective – an archive of work made in 2022
A Grimsby Girl’s World Tour version 1 30 x 30 cms & version 2 • 33 x 28 cms
Version 1 was shown at the Uk Knitting & Stitching shows in the 62 Group of Textile Artists Essence exhibition celebrating the 60th anniversary of the Group.
These are very poignant pieces which capture the essence of my creative practice: textural stitch, appliqué and paint combine to create the allusion of a journey to another place and time. It is a poignant work depicting the visit of grandmother to a grandson she never met. He was born 3 weeks after she died. The Grimsby girl, my Mum, Muriel is shown as a child in this piece. She never had the opportunity to travel outside the UK in her lifetime; here she travels to Copenhagen where her grandson, Sam currently lives with his wife, Eliana.
A Step into the Unknown 2022 – revamped version • mixed media • 74 x 52 cms
Lost in a Strange World 2022 • mixed media – 74 x 52 cms
A selection of samples made for my Cast of Characters workshop for Textileartist.org
A selection of samples made for my Off the Grid workshop for Textileartist.org
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Textileartist.org Stitch Club
I will be teaching my workshop ‘Off the Grid’ in the Textileartist.org Stitch Club from 26 September to 7 October 2022
Sign up now to find out exactly when Stitch Club Registration opens.
https://training.textileartist.org/stitchclub-closed/ This link will take you to a form to get notifications when Stitch Club registrations opens. This will be very soon and it’s a very short window so don’t miss out!
Off the Grid •
Experimenting with Texture and Pattern in Hand Stitch
The aim of the workshop is
- To encourage exploration and experimentation
- To use positive limitations to develop your skills in decision making.
- To help you develop an understanding of the importance of thread choice and how it affects the surface quality of your work.
- To push your your stitches to their full potential and create more surface texture.
- To have fun trying out stitches that are new to you and find out what they can do.
There’s also a new article on Textileartist.org about where I find my inspiration written by Mary Carson
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Made in Grimsby 2021
Made in Grimsby • The documenting of a small lifestyle clothing brand called Anywear. 1975 • in an Edwardian shop premises, womenswear was designed & made in Grimsby from cloth that travelled from far and wide. During the lifespan of the business the need to become more commercial had replaced the ‘one off’ designs. By 2002 the designer had had enough of designing other people’s clothes and Anywear closed its doors.
Materials :linen and recycled clothing fabrics, cotton and linen threads
Techniques: hand and machine stitch, appliqué, piecing, drawing
Size: 139 x 87.5 x 2.5 cms
Photos by Pitcher Design
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New Article on Textileartist.org
I’m really excited to be teaching again for TextileArtist.org Stitch Club next week. It’s a textile story telling workshop and this week they have published a new article about my New York travel story pieces. Check it out here.
Brooklyn Recollections detail 1 
Brooklyn recollections detail 2 
Brooklyn Recollections detail 3 
Sue Stone Brooklyn Recollection, Return and Repartee photo Pitcher Design 
From Grimsby to Greenpoint & Beyond 
Detail of From Grimsby to Greenpoint & Beyond – photo Yeshen Venema
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Girls in a Doorway
a new iPad drawing for work to be made in 2021.
Which Way Now? (below) aka A Self Portrait in Turmoil is perhaps an indication of my frame of mind during lockdown.
size:132 x 59 cms
mixed media
The Girls who made the Suits version 2 (below) is an experiment in texture and pattern
3 new self portraits (below) for the ongoing self portraits now numbering 67. 2 are replacements for portraits that have gone to new homes numbers 26 and 27 and a new one number 67.
A Book Before Bedtime (below) was a commission for the Grimsby Fishing heritage Centre – GFHC in a Box project supported by Arts council England
Made in 2020
Size: 54.5 x 40 cms
Materials: Acrylic gouache, pencil crayon, cotton and wool threads on cotton calico
Techniques: Hand embroidery, painting
A domestic scene from the 1950s when every night my Mum would read me a book at bedtime. We would sit on the settee with me ready for bed in my pyjamas. Our 1950s living room had heavy, dark utility furniture, a patterned carpet, patterned cushions, antimacassars on the settee, and faded patterned wallpaper with plaster ducks flying across the wall. Always a handbag, letters to post, and a favourite photo of my older sister on the side board and always a pair of shoes underneath the sideboard. The wireless set (radio) has a particular significance in capturing the atmosphere of the times. It was via the wireless that we would hear the news, both good and bad, of triumph and of loss. On the wall a picture of my Dad, Fred Stone working on the old pontoon on Grimsby docks in the 1950s with his brother, my Uncle Harry.
I am very proud of my Grimsby heritage and the close ties my family had with the Grimsby fishing industry in the 1950s is often reflected in the artwork I make. I was born in 1952 and as a child I spent a lot of time ‘down dock’ with my Dad, a Grimsby fish merchant. ‘Down Dock’ was a community within a community.
The passing on of knowledge has always been an important part of my artistic practice so when the chance to be involved with this project arose I was honoured to be able to take the opportunity to revisit my roots and make a piece of work for the Fishing Heritage Centre Collection and I welcome the chance for my work to reach a new audience through the loans boxes.
This Life Matters (below)
Work size w 190 cms x 35 cms
Portrait sizes 2 x 17 x 21 cms, 2 x 18.5 x 23.5 cms, 3 x 21 x 26 cms
Recycled linen clothing fabrics, cotton cambric, acrylic film, stranded cotton threads, cotton machine threads, industrial felt mat
Hand stitch, machine stitch, appliqué
‘This Life Matters’ is a series of 7 small portraits which focus on the inequality spotlighted by the Covid 19 pandemic. Each representative of the global community wears the same white t shirt with a slogan ‘This Life Matters’, a nod to Katherine Hamnett’s ‘Choose Life’ slogan t-shirts of the 1980s, Each has their own word embroidered at their side which indicates their circumstances or mindset: Displaced, disenfranchised, disconsolate, dispossessed, dispirited, disabled, and lastly disappearing. Each life is as important as the next.
A series of new teaching samples (Below) made in 2020
Narrative, Strip Weaving & Portrait – hand stitch & mixed media
Portrait of Anne Morrell (below)
hand stitch 26 x 30 cms
A commissioned work to accompany the article Roots in Two continents by Brinda Gill for Issue 95 (July /August) of Selvedge magazine
Brooklyn: Recollection, Return and Repartee (below)
Completed January 2020
Materials: linen & cotton fabrics, cotton & linen threads, acrylic paint
Size 100 x 77 x 2 cms
Techniques: hand stitch, machine stitch, appliqué, painting
Part of a series of work called From Grimsby* to Greenpoint & Beyond this piece Brooklyn: Recollection, Return, and Repartee recounts the artist’s memories of return visit to Brooklyn in March 2019. The viewer is taken on a journey during which flashbacks and glimpses of everyday life, are encapsulated in the ‘mind’s eye’ of the artist; attempting to capture of the essence of a specific New York borough and recalling the brogue of Brooklyn in the form of sights, experiences and written word.
Meandering lines plot our paths and the conversations twist and turn; from small talk on the subway to bantering with tall statues in Banker St, taking in gibberish and graffiti in Greenpoint, a powwow at Prospect Park, books at the Brooklyn public library and the buzz of Brooklyn Museum on the way.
The references in this piece include a homage to the street artist ESPO aka Stephen Powers & artist Deborah Kass
*Grimsby is the artist’s hometown in the UK.
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Which Way Now?
Detail of ‘Which Way Now?’ 132 x 59 cms
‘Which Way Now?’ aka ‘A Self Portrait in Turmoil’ is perhaps an indication of my frame of mind during lockdown.
At first I couldn’t make any work at all and then I became a little obsessed with ideas that I had to get out of my system whatever the result.
I have worked in my studio most days on both large and smaller work and my larger work seems to have become more free and experimental.
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Textileartist.org Stitch Club
I recently taught an online workshop called ‘ The Power of 3’ for the Textileartist.org Stitch Club.
This workshop explores the power of positive limitations ; as a design tool, to create colour schemes, or to audition fabrics and threads for your next piece of work. Use fabric strip weaving and hand stitching to embrace the power of 3 as a starting point; 3 different coloured fabrics, 3 different coloured threads, and 3 stitches.
This simple exercise provides easy way to get rid of the blank page and give a ‘quick start’ to a piece of work. Work with the limitations to achieve a cohesive result and use the grid made by the strip weaving to add pattern, texture or even include a simple line drawing.
The members of Stitch Club produced some amazing work. Here’s a small selection.
work by Diane Goodson Baker 
work by Deborah New 
work by Barbara Ann Stewart 
work by Ann Richards 
work by Mieke Lockefeer 
work by Petra baker 
work by Richard Tremelling 
work by Ali Maclaurin 
work by Marie Haas 
work by Hilary Kimber 
work by Shirley McCann: http://www.shirleyjmccann.com 
work by Esther Collins (@esthercollins5679) • Instagram photos and videos
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Retrospective – An Archive of Work from 2019
Re-Tellings – a major solo exhibition by Grimsby based artist Sue Stone whose work is inspired by people, place and time. Hand embroidery plays a big part in Sue’s work sometimes mixed with machine stitch and/or paint and there are also some digital prints and new iPad drawings.
The pieces in this exhibition are part of an ongoing series of narratives inspired by memories; both the artist’s own and those of others. Members of the public were invited to take part by sharing memories of themselves and their relationships in the form of anecdotes, and images and Sue has now collected stories from all over the world.
The common link in this particular selection of work is that of family and friendship. Many of the stories focus on relationships between family members; the bonds between siblings and cousins, mothers and daughters, grandparents and grandchildren. But there are also tales of imagined journeys and that illusive dream of a Desert Island.
A selection of smaller works for Re-Tellings
Podding Peas with Gran 
A Visit From Grandma 
Remembering Gran 
Study for A Family’s Life 
Study 2 for a Family’s life 
Study 2 for From Grimsby to Greenpoint 
The exhibition also provided another outing for the epic chronicle of the artist’s own life story told in a series of self-portraits one for each year of the artist’s life so far. 66 in total . The 3 new self-portraits below made in 2019 bring the installation up to date.
A Series of iPad drawings made for the Re-Tellings Exhibition 2019.
A Special Commission 2019 – Portrait of Jonah, Felix and Reuben
womanwithafish 