Embroidery – The art or process of decorating cloth or other materials with stitched designs, usually using coloured threads. That is a dictionary definition of embroidery and Jen Goodwin amply illustrates just how much is included in such a simple statement! Jen graduated from The Royal School of Needlework in 2003 having completed the three year Apprentice training which provided a thorough grounding in embroidery techniques. She has gone on to develop her art using traditional skills with a modern twist and also teaches at the RSN as well as creating kits and online content for hobby embroiderers and taking commissions.
Jen values the way her apprenticeship taught her to learn from the ground up, in order to succeed you need to master the basic techniques and that can only be done by practice and patience. Having said that one needs to acquire a degree of flexibility when stitching and sometimes things need to be modified. It is not always necessary to start again and you can learn from from mistakes. Jen takes a very thorough approach to any piece of work doing extensive research and documenting all the stages of her work. She has also enjoyed repeating a single design in different techniques illustrating just how different things can look when stitched with alternative threads giving other textures and dimensions.
Jen has written a book on Blackwork embroidery and is currently working on another book on designing for embroidery to show how to match a technique to an idea. She enjoys incorporating colour into her pieces and has produced some beautiful stitched colour wheels to illustrate how to combine colours and produce shades and tones of colour in her work.
On display was a wonderful collection of Jen’s work and she described how lockdown gave her the opportunity to explore ideas and to stitch for her own pleasure rather than having to meet work deadlines. She loves to embroider birds and in a perfect world would hold an exhibition of bird embroideries and she loves silk shading as was beautifully illustrated in her cat series of embroideries. And those skills were also put to use in the Princess of Wales’ wedding dress and the recent Coronation robes both of which Jen worked on. She is an inspiration to hand stitchers!
