Julie Paterson is an artist and designer, best known for ClothFabric, living and working on Gundungurra and Darug Country
The Menindee Memorial Loop Project
The Menindee Memorial Loop project is dear to my heart. I started this huge collaborative artwork as a response to the perilous state of the Baaka-Darling River, and the terrible mass fish kills that happen because of the exploitation and mismanagement of the river.
There's a lot of grief and rage around the damage and injustice to the River, and this slow-stitching project is designed to help on both counts.
Hundreds of people from all over the world have contributed stitched cotton scraps, each one stitched with 100 crosses to help represent and honour and mourn the more than 40,000 fish that have died.
Now I am inviting you to collaborate with me at a Stich-in, to attach these to the Loop and make it to our goal of one million stitched crosses.
Read on for the details of three upcoming Stitch-Ins in Sydney, and for dates and times when the Loop is exhibited.
Upcoming experiences
Expanded textiles exhibition in Leichhardt
September 5 - 27
I’m showing part of the Menindee Memorial Loop in an upcoming group exhibition called Expanded Textiles, a show that investigates contemporary textile and fibre practices beyond their conventional boundaries, reflecting the growing intersection of sustainability, environmental awareness and contemporary textile and bio-textile art. That’s quite a mouthful, but basically what it means is, it’s an exhibition of textile art where the artists are trying to break some rules.
The group exhibition runs from September 5 - 27 (open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays)
Articulate Project Space is on Gadigal and Wangal Country at 497 Parramatta Road, Leichhardt, NSW.
Two free one-hour Stitch-ins at Articulate Project Space
September 6 at 12 pm and 1pm
There are only ten spots per Stitch-in. To book your spot, click on the link below to email me.
Stitch-in and a pop-up for Sydney Craft Week at UNSW
October 10
You don’t need to book for this Stitch-In - it’s free and will run for a decent chunk of the day.
I'll have my loyal tradie-trailer Roly there that day too, filled with ClothFabric cut pieces, ScrapCloth bundles, cushions, napkins and maybe even some freshly printed Big Girls' Blouses.
I’ll have more details about where and when, closer to the time.
Follow me on Instagram @clothjulie and sign up to my newsletter, so I can keep you in the loop.
Under + Over residency and exhibition - a collaboration with Pippita Bennett at Everglades, Leura
October 24 - November 15
Pip and I are both Blue Mountains textile artists, and we’ve discovered how lovely it is to collaborate together. We started this collaboration mid last year, when Pip’s husband died and my mum became gravely ill. (Mum died in April this year.) The work we have created together marks a time of reflection, loss and great care.
Pip works with plant-based dyeing and stitching, and I use drawing and stencil-printing. Together, we’ve worked into and onto the fabric, building layers under and over as we go, responding to each others’ marks, textures and layers.
For our three-week residency, we’ll be working with the native and exotic plants found in and around the National Trust gardens (designed in the 1930s by Paul Sorenson), natural dyeing, printing and stitching collaboratively,
Our combined residency and exhibition will feature work that we have made together - and the work of co-collaborators who participate in our Printed + Stitched Workshops.
Printed + Stitched Workshop at Everglades, Leura
November 7 or 8
This is a collaborative half-day workshop with me and Pippita Bennett, held within the grounds of Everglades House and Gardens in Leura, Blue Mountains NSW.
We are running two workshops, where participants will join us on site at our residency for some printing and stitching, very much in the same collaborative way Pip and I are working on our exhibition pieces. Excitingly, the work the participants make will form part of a collective exhibition on the last weekend of our three-week residency.
The cost is $330 per workshop.
Click through to Humanitix, where you can secure your spot.
ClothFabric will be changing soon
I’ve been running Cloth for 32 years now, and I feel proud and lucky to have had such an extraordinarily long run. I put that down to my willingness to adapt to whatever is going on for me and around me.
Since my mum died in April, I’ve been taking stock of how I want to spend my days and my energy. Time to adapt again, and that means there are going to be some significant changes to the business. I’m not totally sure what these changes will look like yet. It might be a transition period where I reduce the range available or increase the minimums or print to order and hold no stock.
It could be about changing the basecloths I use, focussing more on sourcing deadstock, locally. It might be that I simply close the business. I’m not sure of the specific details at this stage, but what I do know for certain is that 2026 is the year for deciding on and implementing major changes for Cloth and for me.
So, if you’ve got a project in mind that you’ve not quite gotten round to ordering fabric for, now’s the time.
ScrapCloth
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.
It’s part of my mission to help people experience how calming and grounding it is 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 me feel good, and making things out of the scraps that most people turf out to landfill makes me feel even better.​
Big Girls Blouse
I'm hitting my stride now on my new 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 stylish people of all sizes and gender identities, these vintage shirts are wearable artworks, made with skill and care using linen and cotton shirts sourced by my friend, gifted op-shopper, Helen. Wearing a BGB original is best-practice sustainable fashion.
Because these are one-off pieces, if you fancy one, make an enquiry.
Artworks
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.
Every art work I make begins with being curious, really looking, and then drawing loosely and a bit intuitively.
​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.
I collaborate and exhibit pretty regularly. And if you stay at Rough Track Cabins, each of our cabins is filled with my artworks for sale.
Soon, you’ll be able to purchase artworks online again. In the meantime, if you are in Blackheath, you can make an appointment to come to my studio to see what I have available.
I'm chuffed to see my designs out in the world, on the upholstery of Sydney's new intercity Mariyung train fleet.
These fabric designs are inspired by the bush in and around Sydney. You can catch one of these sleek beauties to the Central Coast and Newcastle, to the Blue Mountains and Lithgow, and down south to Wollongong.
The Imperfect Manifesto
It was a warm spring afternoon when we wrote this, many moons ago when we lived in a wee fibro house called ‘Twice Lucky’. 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.
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 book is heart and soul of Cloth in 240ish pages, and I'm quite proud of it.
Rough Track Cabins
I live in Blackheath in the Blue Mountains on the Rough Track. It’s privilege to live on Darug and Gundungurra land on 29 acres above the Grand Canyon. It's a place that inspires me every day.
​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...
If you've never stayed in an art gallery before, this is your chance.
Each cabin has a small bag of stitching gear in it, filled with 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.
If you'd like updates on the cabins, click on the link below to see the Rough Track website and subscribe.
About me
I am a painter, printmaker and designer of textiles. I own a small fabric company called Cloth that I set up 35 years ago to create designs that tell Australian stories.
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 fabric by hand, the old-fashioned way.
I collaborate with others for the joy of making something together that we couldn’t make alone.
A big part of what I do these days involves running collaborative art projects designed to support mental health by helping people develop a creative practice.
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.
I live a simple life. It feels good.
Contact me
My studio on the Rough Track is on Gundungurra and Dharug Land.
325 Evans Lookout Road
Blackheath NSW 2785
We acknowledge the Gundungurra and Darug 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.
And we gratefully accept the invitation of the Uluru Statement from the Heart to support Voice, Treaty and Truth.