Joanna Fowles - Sydney textiles designer

this morning I read the articles that had arrived in my inbox and webpages overnight and discovered a talented Sydney based textiles designer called Joanna Fowles via this article in TDF (the design files). Joanna is originally from the UK, though has lived in Australia previously - when she did a year-long TAFE screenprinting course. she then returned to England where she studied textile design at Chelsea College of Art. I love her geometric designs - featuring many large and overlapping dots. she specializes in Shibori dyeing and printing, using the Shibori indigo as well as other colours to create her scarves and fabrics. I notice Fowles also has a design featured in the wonderful "Digital Textile Design" book by Melanie Bowles and Ceri Isaac, which "covers everything students and practitioners of textile design will need to learn about designing and printing digitally".

I made a few nice discoveries from this article too - The School is a studio and education space in Rosebery, Sydney where Fowles runs some workshops. I've signed up for one of her classes to make a Shibori scarf. it's a little expensive but from all reports is worth the money, so I'm looking forward to trying this at the end of April.

also, Fowles mentions a couple of stores in Surry Hills - I went to these today, as it's been years since I went shopping in Surry Hills - though there's a fabric store nearby that I've been meaning to visit for a while - and found a lovely handwoven beach / bath towel at Collector Store. I had a look in The Standard Store located on the other corner of the block but the garments, whilst lovely, were out of my price range. I particularly liked the colourful hand-knits from Erotokritos and if I'd had a spare $250+ and were a couple of sizes smaller I might have bought one. in the meantime, I joined their Facebook page so I can see if there's other fabrics I like.

other discoveries include Kinfolk magazine - I tried the ipad versions of the first three issues - unfortunately subsequent issues aren't available for the ipad. I might try find a printed copy of it, as those first three issues were great - it's just the amount of time it takes to arrive from the USA that puts me off often. also, Patternity has some great patterned images, and Synaptic Stimuli is aptly named for the visual feast that it is.