Meet the Maker - Jill Kipnis
How did you discover your love for embroidery?
I discovered embroidery through my mum and school. I was lucky as I was taught sewing at school. I found I had a natural ability and excelled in the subject and art. My mum was also a significant influence. She always had a piece of craftwork on the go. It could have been a piece of knitting, embroidery or sewing. However, my mum didn’t finish many of her pieces, so when I teach and give talks, I try and make sure people have an end purpose for their work, as I feel it encourages them to finish it.
What do you enjoy most about teaching?
Inspiring people to find mindfulness and peace and creating something unique and personal. My mission is to get the whole world to embroider. I’m a people person and love bringing people together and looking at the meaning behind the embroidery. Hence, I put together the Heroes Quilt project during the first lockdown of 2020. So many of my students come to me as complete beginners, saying, ‘I can’t.’ I love the challenge of helping them turn that into ‘I can’.
Can you tell us a bit about what your achievements so far and what you are currently working on?
I run workshops from my North London home every two weeks during term times. Here people work on individual projects, from traditional techniques to free motion embroidery pieces.
Highgate Institute Tutor
I will be teaching a winter term course of stitching at the Highgate Institute starting in Autumn 2022. Looking at how we can take a simple vegetable like an onion and make it into a textural piece of embroidery.
Talks and Workshops
I have given several online workshops and lectures to various textile groups across the country. A lecture that always seems popular is one that I have created called “How to design for Embroidery.” I have taught machine embroidery, blackwork, and crewelwork to goldwork.
Embroiderers Guild
I am currently working on a series of online machine embroidery workshops for the Guild that hopefully will be available in November.
Written and self-published two books
The Heroes quilt is a project I put together during the first lockdown of 2020. I asked people to embroider their hero during the first lockdown and write why they embroidered what they did. I am fascinated by the power of the stitch and the meaning behind it. The quilt was exhibited at the Knitting & Stitching Show and the Quilt Festival of 2021. I delivered a talk about this project at the K&S show last year and, this year, an online talk to the Embroiderers Guild. I had some excellent feedback as people who contributed their squares talked about the meaning behind them, which so many people found moving. We had some stories that would make you cry and smile. To find out more about this project, check the link here.
Stumpwork Book
I self-published and wrote a small book on Stumpwork embroidery, and I am delivering two workshops using this technique this year at the show.
The Textile Jubilee Collage
A local haberdashery shop asked me to create a community textile collage to celebrate the Queens Platinum Jubilee. The Arts Council of England funded the project. I taught embroidery to various community organisations throughout North London. The project pulled a broad spectrum of people together through embroidery, from dementia patients to children on free school meals and the regular stitching community.
The Heroes Quilt
To find out more, please look at my website here.
Articles published
I have written several articles for Stitch Magazine, and a piece about Colbert Embroidery should be available in the forthcoming magazine. Topics covered include machine embroidery, how to embroider onto a garment, creating a machine embroidered poppy for remembrance day, and making an embroidery onion using up your stash!