About me
I am a painter, printmaker and designer of textiles. I own a small fabric company called Cloth that I set up 30 years ago, because it made sense at the time and still does now.
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I live in NSW's Blue Mountains on Darug and Gundungurra land, where I work with a small team of people who love what they do, making textiles by hand, the old-fashioned way.
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I collaborate with others for the joy of making something together that we couldn’t make alone.
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A big part of what I do these days involves running collaborative art projects geared to support mental health by helping people develop a creative practice.
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I take commissions and I exhibit. My favourite place to be is working in my studio. Or pottering about the garden.
I’ve written a book and a manifesto to live by.
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I live a simple life. It feels good.
Join me at the katoomba Sustainable textile symposium
Saturday 18 october 10am - 3pm
tibbi whalan hall, level 1/81-83
Katoomba Street
Speakers - jane milburn, robert inshaw, jessica leslie, vincent turner + daisy rose cooper... and me
Hey there people, for the last weekend of Sydney Craft Week you'll be able to catch me in Katoomba, NSW.
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I'll be setting up shop with Roly, my tradie trailer. Roly will be well stocked with ClothFabric scraps, cut pieces and remnant bundles all ready for your Sydney Craft Week projects.
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You are also invited to join me in a stitch-in, to collaborate with me on my ongoing Menindee Memorial Loop Project. ​
At the Sustainable Textile Symposium, for the first time ever, I'll be selling my prototype handprinted one-off re-loved linen and cotton shirts. Big Girls Blouse is the name I'm giving to this project - partly to push against the dodgy British idiom, and partly as a nod to the great Australian tv series made by Magda, Gina, Jane and Marg.
Not just for girls - for people of all sizes and gender identities, these vintage shirts are wearable art, made with skill and care using shirts sourced by my friend, gifted op-shopper, Helen. ​
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The Symposium is a ticketed event. To get tickets and to read more about the Sustainable Textile Symposium, click on the link below.
Big Girls Blouse
Reef: a repairable landscape in progress
Back in the UK when I was a kid, one of my favourite books was the Encyclopaedia Britannica - the kids version. (Thanks Mum and Dad.) I clearly remember poring over the entries on the Great Barrier Reef and corals. I remember being amazed to discover that, even though it looks like an underwater landscape, coral is actually tiny animals, hundreds or even thousands of wee polyps. I still find it mind-blowing. ​
Within my lifetime, unchecked global heating has created conditions that are endangering our World Heritage-listed reefs to the point of extinction. Increasingly frequent and severe coral bleaching events will kill our reefs, unless we act to protect them. We need to repair the damage - and with political will, we can. ​That's what this artwork is all about.
On my recent residency at Sydney's Tiliqua Tiliqua Gallery, I began creating what I call a 'Repairable Landscape.' First I made a large-scale stencil-printed artwork that shows an ideal, healthy reef. Then, to mimic the terrible damage to our reefs, in front of an audience in the gallery I cut it up into bits.
From that point on, I invited people to join me in repairing the reef, slow-stitching it back together in a collective act of repair. Lots of collaborators responded to my call out in Sydney's inner West. Thanks for coming - and a special shout out to the wonderful Knitting Nannas who came to help.
Then I took the Reef artwork up to Kuku Yalanji and Yirrganydji Country at Port Douglas to learn more about the Forever Reef project - a coral ark collecting and preserving the genetic biodiversity of all coral species across the world. The scientists and aquarists there did some stitching too, while they told us about their incredible and urgent work.
This project is ongoing and I'm hoping to show you some more ripples from it later in the year. ​​​
ClothFabric
It wasn’t long after I came to Australia that I started a business designing and hand-printing fabric. I wanted to make contemporary and natural fabric for people's homes, and I wanted to make it locally and sustainably. For me, continuing the tradition of hand-printed flatbed fabric production is more important than ever, in this increasingly digital world.
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I started Cloth almost 30 years ago. Today my designs continue to be inspired by the Australian landscape and printed in small batches by hand in a tin shed in regional NSW.
All my fabric is available to purchase online or by appointment in my studio and workshop in Blackheath, NSW.
We sell by the metre, by the piece and by the bundle. We also have a swatch service on request.
For all things fabric,
head to my ClothFabric website.
ArtWork
The work I make is inspired by the materials I use and the environment I'm in. The land, the sea, the plants and animals around me.
My art practice is where my textile designs begin, but the art I make is also very much its own thing.
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Every art work I make begins with being curious, really looking, and then drawing loosely and a bit intuitively.
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The aim is always to enjoy the experience of flow, and keep the work simple, and full of the pleasures of layering, colours and shapes.
Community Garden Art Project
Community Gardens is a collaborative art project that cultivates creativity and connection.
You'll forage, You'll draw, I'll print, and
you'll stitch.
You can take part wherever you are.
you don't need to be good at drawing or sewing. it's the imperfections that make our collaboration beautiful.
You'll have your own piece to keep and make of it what you will.
look at what my collaborators did AT the Embroiderers Guild NSW
It's the slow-stitching that people love the most. It's calming and lovely to get into a flow state.
I number every piece I make, right there proudly on the clay. This helps me lean in to trusting my beginner’s mind, and clearly shows where each imperfect pot comes in the timeline of my 10,000 hour goal.
Working with clay feels exhilarating and free, and it also keeps me humble and grounded as a maker.
10,000 Hours Clay Project
They say it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill. I’m putting that theory to the test and documenting the process. Over time, as I move from being a beginner potter to becoming experienced, I will show and make available for sale the results of my commitment.
When it's hard to paint the clouds, we draw the mountains.
- The Imperfect Manifesto -
Making things makes me feel good, and making things out of the scraps that most people turf out to landfill makes me feel even better.​
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I save all my scraps, organise them into colour groups and curate ScrapCloth bundles of loveliness. These are ready to make into curtains or lampshades or cushions or anything else I can think of.
ScrapCloth
Increasingly people are experiencing that it's calming and grounding to take some time to make something with your own hands.
ScrapCloth bundles can be used along with other fabrics - like old pairs of jeans or existing curtains - to make something with good old-fashioned slow stitching.
It's a lovely relaxing thing to do and something of a lost art.
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Making things makes us feel good.
- The Imperfect Manifesto -
The Imperfect Manifesto
It was a warm spring afternoon when we wrote this. Sitting around in our backyard with a glass of wine, we were talking about what mattered to us, what we felt about life.
What began as a bit of picnic philosophy became a set of guiding principles. For me, these are words to live by.
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ClothBound
This is my first ever book.
It’s about my creative process over twenty years of designing and making ClothFabric. It's a labour of love that I worked on with a group of lovely and talented people.
ClothBound tracks the development of my work all the way from first images and notes made in my sketch books through to resolved designs and collections. In the book I tell those stories, champion the imperfect and offer up a modest philosophy of sorts.
This is heart and soul of Cloth in 240ish pages, and I'm quite proud of it.
I live in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains on the Rough Track on 29 acres above the Grand Canyon. It's a place that inspires me every day.
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Our two little ironstone cabins feel a bit like little galleries you can sleep in - filled with artworks, furnished with handmade curtains and ScrapCloth lampshades and ClothFabric cushions...
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If you've never stayed in an art gallery before, this is your chance.
Rough Track Cabins
Each cabin has a small bag of stitching gear in it - ScrapCloth pieces, needles and threads, all for your use while you stay. We invite our guests to make their mark by stitching on the curtains, and it's always heartwarming to see what they create - in between bushwalking (maybe down to our private lookout), and playing Battleships by the fire.
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If you'd like updates on the cabins, click on the link below to see the Rough Track website and subscribe.
When you get right down to it, the essential thing is to do what you do with your whole heart.
- The Imperfect Manifesto -
Subscribe to my newsletter
Keen to be the first to know about all things ClothFabric or any of my other projects? I only put out one newsletter and it covers the lot. To get a heads up about new work, exclusive offers, upcoming pop-ups and exhibitions and other excitements, sign up here, and know that, of course, we will never share your data with anyone, ever.
JULIE'S STUDIO on the ROUGH TRACK
DARUG AND GUNDUNGURRA LAND
325 EVANS LOOKOUT ROAD
BLACKHEATH NSW 2785
Acknowledgement of Country
We acknowledge the Darug and Gundungurra people, the Traditional Owners of the land where we live and work.
We recognise their continuing connection to land, water and community.
We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
