Craft Patterns Plus

It's not what you know but who you know that counts in life, so if a designer  could boast Kaffe Fassett and Hugh Ehrman among the people who pushed her into needlepoint, you could be forgiven for thinking that the old adage is true. It's not. What matters to both these well-known gentlemen is what you know; talent in other words - and Jill Gordon has certainly got that in abundance.

Back in the early seventies, when Kaffe Fassett was becoming a recognizable name in design and the textile worlds, Jill was involved in a co-operative workshop in Weatherall in Gloucestershire. "Kaffe used to come down to the house on weekends and we were all together one Easter painting eggs. I hadn't painted since I was young because I had been told I was hopeless at school, but Kaffe was really encouraging about what I did on these eggs so I decided to take it further."

Jill started painting watercolours and learning all she could. "I used to go and stay with Kaffe in London and I'd work from seven in the morning until nine at night because they were the sort of hours he was doing - he's a great worker. He use to go off for a swim in Hamstead Pond at half-past six in the morning and call up stairs saying, ' I've just left your next piece of work down here'! He's got an amazing amount of energy."

As she had no formal training at all, Jill decides to enroll at art collage as a mature student to learn some basic techniques and some background information but the mid-Seventies was all about abstract art and expressionism which wasn't what she wanted. "I left after the Foundation Year and went to work for and with Kaffe on a series of murals and then on needlepoint designs."

Kaffe had been looking for something that everyone could do and needlepoint seemed the answer. Jill started designing and stitching too - again teaching herself as she went -  and came up with small pictures and cushion inserts. She also realized it was possible to reach a wider market with needlepoint, particularly she met Hugh Ehrman in 1979 - "Hugh wanted to exhibit some of my paintings in his first shop on London's Fulham Road but as he was also starting to get interested in mail order needlepoint he asked me to do some designs. I've been designing on and off for him ever since. I didn't realize that as a designer, you don't actually have to stitch the needlepoint - and Hugh forgot to fill me in on that! I have always stitched the whole thing and it's been very good for me because you learn a lot more about what you're doing and how different colours go together."

Artist Among Stitchers

When it comes to actually designing needlepoint canvas, the artist in Jill is very much to the fore. "I'll do tiny sketches of an idea and elaborate on them. As I draw I know how I want it to look and when I've got it how I want it I'll do the design in pencil and cartridge paper that's the exact size of the canvas. I go over that in waterproof black pen so I can put the canvas on top and draw through it." Jill likes to get the drawings as fine as possible because they get coarser as you put them through the canvas and coarser again in wool.  " I spend so much time on the sketching stage because I think the original spirit of the drawing should come out in the stitched piece."

Flowers are Jill's earliest stitching subjects and they are still one of her most popular influences although ask her what inspires her and her answer is quite simple. "Everything I look at. Just as I think I'd like to concentrate on flowers and landscapes I'll see something else, some bone china or textiles or something, and I want to do all those things too."

In the 1980's, Jill spent four years in Yugoslavia and found so much to stitch and paint."There were  massive amounts of wild flowers,wild cyclamen and hollyhocks and these vast landscapes. Things were a bit frantic here before I went away so the quieter way of life there gave me new energy. I didn't want to come back to England, but I suppose it was just as well when you look at what's happened there."

After she came back from Yugoslavia, Jill worked for Kaffe Fassett again, but with a young family to look after, commuting backwards and forwards got too difficult. "Then I was offered the book (The Tapestry Book) and I came up with 20 new designs which wasn't as difficult as it sounds. It was actually thinning out the ideas that was a problem. I've been living with it all seven days a week for the past year - and stitching is still a pleasure!"

There may be another book in the future, but what Jill would really do is work on some huge wall-hangings. "Needlepoint was originally developed as a more accessible alternative to woven tapestries so you'd find huge great hangings in country houses. I'd love to see that again. I'm interested in doing very small designs and as soon as I get a moment I'm doing some tiny screens with the same amount of detail as my larger projects - just really small."

What also fascinates Jill is series of designs. "in the book there's a design called 'View from a Window' where you are inside looking out. That sparked a whole lot of ideas about interiors. You could do hundreds just of a window looking out on different scenes.

Is there anything else she would love to do? "I'd love to make a three-dimensional folly stitched on canvas with needlepoint stone and moss and ivy creeping up it. It would be about five feet tall and you could use it as a doorstop! I'd love to do that, and more big hangings, and teaching; I really enjoy that because I could learn so much as well. There are so many things I want to do, it's just finding the time to do them."

Source Needlecraft Magazine