INSPIRED BY FRAKTUR (Bath Textile Summer School 2025)
- A two-day embroidery workshop exploring the charming inspiration for embroidery to be found in Pennsylvanian German fraktur, a most beloved form of American folk art. You can read. an article I wrote about fraktur for The Stitcher's Journal in The Stitcher's Journal Archive HERE.
- Read more about the workshop below. Classes take place in the Royal Scientific and Literary institution on leafy Queen Square. For more information and to book a place (£250 for two days) please visit the Bath Textile Summer School HERE.
Additional Information
My second workshop for the Bath Summer Textile School 2025 explores the rich seam of inspiration for the embroiderer provided by Pennsylvanian German fraktur, a beloved form of early American folk art created by the Pennsylvanian German immigrants in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
Many of the motifs will be familiar to quilters – tulips, pairs of confronting birds, trails of leaves and flowers and people – all with graphic ‘stitch’ directions in the painting of the petals, feathers, details of dress.
Using antique linen, fabric paint and, most of all, stitch, you will create an heirloom piece of fraktur-inspired textile. Fraktur took many forms and for the purposes of this workshop we will look at the beautiful pictures created by teachers as ‘awards of merit’ for pupils or simply given as gifts or to be used as book plates. We will not be embroidering fraktur text (unless you want to!) but the inclusion of text would be appropriate, even if is only a name. It might be a family tree, or something to celebrate a family occasion, or simply a beautiful image to frame.
Caroline will have extensive references, templates and examples, and all materials will be provided, including a specially commissioned collection of threads.
You can read F is for Fraktur, which appeared in Issue 21 of the Stitcher’s Journal, HERE.
