The theme for the 2025 Members’ Project is Land and Sea.
As an island nation, we are surrounded by seas and we offer a huge range of coastlines. The Jurassic Coast stretches about 96 miles from Exmouth in East Devon to Studland Bay in Dorset and is a World Heritage Site for the value of its rocks and fossils. Ammonites, dinosaur bones and sharks’ teeth tell of its 185 million year history from arid deserts and deep seas to dinosaur-infested swamps. The white cliffs of Dover, reaching a height of 350 feet and composed mainly of chalk, are accented by streaks of black flint and can be seen clearly from a distance out at sea. The shingle landscape of the Kent coast is a mix of nature reserve, nuclear power stations and fishing boats. Norfolk offers pristine sand beaches, soaring cliffs, saltmarshes and estuaries. Liverpool is a bustling busy port with shipping containers, cranes and huge ships – a contrast to the colourful beach huts, striped deck chairs and ice creams of the pleasure beach.
Members were invited to show us in stitch their interpretation of Land and Sea.
Jackie Adams
An Evening Stroll
The downs along our coastline in the evening are stunning. From Mudeford Quay to Avon beach looking over to the Isle of Wight. I didn’t want to do anything representative for my embroidery project. This work is all experimental using a soldering iron, beads, glue, and threads. I love looking at artists like Delaney, Hunterwasser, and Monet. Vibrant colour and simplicity. The pure colours and rough edges and free stitching have been an enjoyable learning curve. My process is to have a rough idea. Start, then adapt as I go along.
Liz Bell
Puffin Rock
Oh, there once was a Puffin
Just the shape of a muffin,
And he lived on an island In the bright blue sea!
Florence Page Jacques, 1956
Puffins spend eight months of the year at sea, returning to land each spring to reunite with their mate and raise their young pufflings. They are a striking example of a creature deeply at home in both places.
Rosie Collingridge
Gentle Waves
This piece was inspired by a photograph I took of my son and his wife and little boy. The whole picture is silk. The blue I dyed with procion dyes and the sand is not dyed. The clothes are scraps of silk and the hand stitch in sketch style is silk thread. The lace is vintage from my stash and I finished off with some glass beads and some Swarovski crystal.
Laura Edgar
Sea of Souls
I am fascinated by the sea. I am drawn to it, it holds memories, and I find it a place of solace and reflection.
Nature is spontaneous, ethereal and uncontrollable. In this piece the roaring sea crashes onto the shore. I wanted to evoke the dramatic moment that sea and land entwined and the emotive power of nature and our relationship with it.
Laura Edgar
Swallows over the Dunes
This piece was inspired by a summer’s day at Bamburgh beach in Northumberland, a place filled with special memories and personal experiences.
The hazy sky glows with the sun, which glimmers onto the sea, as swallows swoop across the wild, untamed dunes. I attempted to capture the memory and express the feelings attached to the beach, to portray a sense of place and our affinity with the natural environment.
Liz Ellison
Blast Beach
Inspired by the serene yet dynamic northern English coastline, this embroidery captures the fleeting beauty of the foaming tide as it washes over pebbles and shingle. My intention was to reflect the ever-changing nature of the shifting shoreline, while simultaneously evoking a sense of calm and relaxation. This is achieved through the rhythmic and reassuring portrayal of the never-ending tide, complemented by a soft colour palette. The piece features intricate beading that shimmers like sunlight catching on the waves, adding a touch of sparkle to the artwork. The myriad of hues and contrasts in the pebbles and shingle are depicted using a unified earthy tone, contributing to the calming aesthetic.
Greta Friggins
Bembridge Landslip
The Isle of Wight; an ever-changing and adapting island where little coastal landslips occur daily, blurring the boundaries of land and sea. A boat dragged up the cliff, a beach shed slipping down; chains and padlock forming new fossils alongside the Jurassic life encrusted in the clay. I love to walk along the Bembridge Ledges observing the flux, the duel between land and sea, the reclamation of nature. The rebuilding by man, the flotsam and jetsam of death and life, A liminal space. This work captures a moment in time and is, itself rebuilt from scraps, re-pieced. An embellisher merges the fabric and threads of the base whilst machine stitch, applique, couching and hand stitch adds texture to the surface.
Nicole Gammie
Aussie Beach Shacks
When Land and Sea was announced as the theme for the project, the first thought that came to mind was how to combine both elements and this is easiest done along the beach where the two intersect. The next idea came with the need to make the image interesting and what would capture people’s attention. A unique feature of some of Melbourne’s beaches are the little beach shacks. The idea arose to ‘replicate’ these in a piece of handmade bobbin lace and embellish it with embroidery and hence Aussie Beach Shacks was made. Imagine you are sitting in a boat offshore and this is what you see, the water with its white caps, the beach with its tide movements, the shacks, and finally the sky providing a backdrop.
Tricia Garwood
Eclectic Light
Mesmerised by the purity and the intensity of the light, the sun glistens, sparks and jumps, as spangles flutter and float on the calm turquoise sea.
A sense of time standing still, intrigued by the mysterious opaque crystal haze of the hot afternoon sun.
The ghostly mist rolling in from the sea enveloping the shoreline…… then …. the sun sitting silently on the horizon waiting to quietly slip away until another day dawns.
This piece was inspired by St Ives in Cornwall. The narrative seeks to connect the emotions and the fleeting childhood memories of my visits.
The main piece is a juxtaposition of a photograph I took from the beach and sea taken from the shoreline. I manipulated the photograph in photoshop, and decorated it with a variety of hand, machine stitch, gold work techniques and metal shim iconography, to create a luscious embellished piece.
Fiona Gill
Welcome to Lyme Bay
When I heard the theme for this year’s Members’ Project – Land and Sea – I really wanted to take part as I recently relocated from the Yorkshire Dales to the Dorset Coast and I thought well, this is your prompt to respond to your new environment. I’m very much a portrait and floral kind of artist so I wanted to try a landscape just for my own personal development, and this was my cue.
This piece is a much smaller version of the original piece I began to make but as commission work rudely interrupted I had to scale down in order to finish in time.
I’ve tried to capture the intense colours of the summer sea and stunning dramatic coastline around Lyme Bay. I didn’t buy anything new I restricted myself to using materials I already had which in turn meant problem solving in lots of different ways.
I soon discovered than trying to hand stitch through five or six layers of fabric isn’t fun and that stitching tiny pieces leads to them fraying and almost disintegrating. Finer fabrics layer better but are often more tightly woven which makes them more difficult to sew into. The main problem was holding all the layers in place so that I could then embroider onto them. The answer … invisible thread and a wavy zigzag machine stitch! I also discovered that hand sewing with invisible thread is the devil’s work!
I experimented with painted Bond-a-Web and garden fleece. Some of the textiles I’ve used here, are hand dyed silk velvet, organza, vintage upholstery fabric, and faux suede. I’ve used embroidery threads and fashion yarn employing both hand and machine embroidery along the way.
Ultimately, I am very pleased with the results and feel that the piece does evoke those hot summer days on the coast when the sky is so blue that it goes on forever and the sea looks like the Mediterranean. Can you feel the warm breeze and hear the gentle sussurous of waving grasses and the sparking sea? Good!. Me too!
Wendy Greaves
Between The Footsteps & The Fall
The sea has long inspired the creative imagination, yet it is through textiles and fibre that I find the most resonant way to converse with place. Thread, cloth, and stitch offer more than image; they hold touch, rhythm, and memory. My work asks viewers to pause, to “watch where you tread,” and to enter into a slower, more embodied dialogue with the natural world.
Rooted in the dramatic coastline of North Devon, my practice is not concerned with replication but with evocation. I seek the textures of cliff and cavern, the shifting moods of tide and weather, the quiet pulse of land and sea. Each piece becomes an act of attention, a mapping of presence, a poetic gesture that lingers between observation and feeling.
I work experimentally, letting process guide me. Hand and machine embroidery, felting, embellishment, monoprint and mark-making fold into one another, growing organically through play and discovery. At its core lies a sense of fragility: the delicate vulnerability of cloth and fibre mirrors the impermanence of the seascapes I honour. Between The Footsteps & The Fall embodies this tension—born of cavern shadows, seaweed tangles, murky pools, and the restless energy of the Atlantic casting its debris ashore.
This stretch of coast is geologically ancient, composed of shales, slates, and sandstones, the sediments of vanished seas. Their strata whisper through my materials: natural wools, muslin washed in pigment, chiffon and calico layered to suggest ripple marks, fossil traces, tidal inscriptions. The littoral zone (the space between tides) becomes a theatre of life, where corals and seaweed entwine with the imprint of human presence in fragments cast aside.
Living by the sea heightens my awareness of its fragility. Each retreating tide leaves behind delicate watermarks and intricate rills, temporary signatures soon erased. Yet these patterns also echo a deeper urgency: rising seas, advancing erosion, the precarious balance of coastlines at risk. My work invites a gaze that is both intimate and reflective, calling us to feel the beauty of what is fleeting, and to recognise the quiet urgency of its preservation.
Catherine Hill
Butlins 1978
As soon as the schools broke up for the summer, we’d be off on our family holiday. I loved our annual seaside adventure and in 1978 it was extra special. I was nine years old, and we were staying at Butlins Skegness for the very first time. The campsite had everything I could wish for, all activities were free, and I had the freedom to roam and play on my own wherever I liked.
It was around late Spring each year Mum would start her preparations. She kept to a tight budget and planned everything meticulously.
We had a wonderful time. However the backdrop to this story is something I was completely oblivious to at the time. Money was extremely tight. My parents were dealing with mortgage interest rates of 12% and rising. The UK was in the depths of a period of austerity and later that year the country would experience the ‘Winter of Discontent’.
Original words composed and stitched by Catherine Hill. Hand embroidered onto cotton cloth.
Penny Hill
Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand
Researching possible inspirations for the project theme, I was struck by how the textures I saw carved on sandy beaches reflected the waves that covered them at high tide. This led me to explore how this comparison might be recreated in a textile form.
This piece depicts the textures of the intertidal zone at both high tide and low tide, In one the waves move restlessly, foaming and breaking in constant motion. In the other lies the record of that motion, sand carved into frozen waves. Both panels have been built up in layers, starting with sari silk ribbons bonded and then stitched to a calico base. This was then overlaid with textured paper tapes, cut to represent the shape of the waves. In the high tide section sea foam was created using a scattering of French knots. These were also applied to the low tide section, with additional textures added using a layer of tulle, couched down lengths of textured yarn, and a few seashell and stone embellishments.
Sue Jeffries
Rock Pool: A View on the Beach
One of my favourite coastlines is the North Sea beaches of Northumberland. The beautiful wide, sandy beaches are full of seaweed, pebbles and granite rocks. Although the views out to sea can be spectacular, I am drawn to the small detail of the rock pools, which I aim to represent with my embroidered work. The piece is handstitched and I’ve used wool, linen and cotton thread with felt, fabric, glass beads and roving to show the colours and textures of the rock pool. All the materials were found in my existing stash!
Fiona Johnston
Life Below
This was inspired by a quilt by Christina Arcenegui Bono of a girl dropping into water and all the fish life that passed around her as she descended. It had an all white background with detailing in white thread, only the girl’s costume was in colour. My piece is very different but I tried to capture the life below the water line, with a token patch of land above.
Pam Keeling
Low Tide at the Boathouse
A second holiday at The Boathouse, Llanbedrog with friends and Jenny’s very evocative poem inspired this piece. It totally summed up the scene in front of the house and gave endless hours of joy watching the comings and goings on the small strip of land at the front with ridged areas of sand dispersed between pools of water and the seemingly endless sea in the distance. The heron, egret and oyster catchers were daily visitors at the edges of the pools and sea. Yes, there were lots of dogs as mentioned, but they didn’t seem to successfully fit into the piece.
Trying to capture this did not prove to be easy with several attempts before settling on this. Fabrics and threads are from my stash. Couching and straight stitches seemed to be appropriate, not only to hold the fabrics in place but also to indicate the rippling sand bars and dark angular rocks. The foaming edges of the sea are mainly chain stitches with a form of loose french knots and straight stitches. Photos of the birds greatly helped with the heron, egret and oyster catchers. I chose to include Jenny’s poem as it was this that really made me want to produce a piece of work to illustrate her description of the holiday..
Claire Kent
Seams in Stone
Every summer I go to the Cornish coast with my family, the coastal landscape calms and re-energises, bringing mental and physical well-being and balance back into our lives. The rocks are comforting in their solidity and evocative in their layers of history and transformation. The landscape, natural forms, textures and patterns inspire my embroideries, rich in texture and emotion of the places I visit.
Alex Messenger
Tropical Fish
If I had a bucket list, diving amongst the corals and tropical fish would definitely be on it. These colourful little chaps are Ocellaris Clownfish (Amphiprion Ocellaris) although many recognise them as ‘Nemo’ from the 2003 Disney film. They live in coral reefs in the warm waters of the Indo-Pacific and, although their colouring may vary slightly (depending on where they are located) they will all have the brightly coloured body with white and black bands. There is surely nothing so beautiful and varied as a tropical sea-bed. The myriad colours of the softly waving coral reef abound with fish of all sizes and colours darting playfully in and out amongst water of the deepest and clearest blue.
Janet O’Donovan
“Vortex”
I have a life-long interest and love of earth’s life and geology.
I have imagined looking upwards from the base of the sea, at the edges of this piece, up through a vortex of swirling waves to the edges of land and with the land plants illuminated and powered by the sun’s rays. Swirls of inktense pencils have been used as a base of colour before using dmc perle thread for the embroidery. I find this thread adds good texture and shine to my work.
Janine Pound
On the Sea Shore
I found a handkerchief that had belonged to my mother-in-law, the colours of which reminded me of sand and sea. I used ideas from a workshop with Anne Kelly to create the central under the sea section. The grasses and flowers stitched around the edge are reminiscent of seaside flora. I have used hand dyed fabrics for the appliqué pieces, hand and machine embroidery and silk ribbon embroidery.
Loraine Roselli
Reviving Penguins-Treasure Island
This is an addition to an on-going project. I use old paperback copies of the classics and give them new life. I like to use the traditional penguin size so they look uniform on the shelf and the treasure chest is a goldwork extra that I added because Robert Louis Stevenson invented the pirate treasure chest when he wrote the book. What is more “Land and Sea” than an island?
Loraine Roselli
Summer Fjord Rolling Landscape
I used to live in Sweden and visited the Norwegian Fjords often. They lend themselves very well to this long format and therefore, a roll of fabric. The spindle is part of a kitchen foil roll and the base and spindle are covered in old book pages. The base is made from wood. I dyed the background fabric myself.
Colleen Shaw
Gaia and Sedna
The theme ‘Land and Sea’ gave me many ideas but I kept coming back to ideas based around where I live a few miles from the coast and the broad strip of golden sand that runs down from Cleethorpes to the Wash.
In April I saw the North Sea exhibition at the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich. There was a selection of beautifully drawn maps all including a compass rose and some with mythical creatures.
I chose to create a map of the coastline and included animals that live with us. I added a Selkie, a mythical seal woman and depicted her at the point of change. The land has a loosely female shape to represent Gaia.
The green heart symbolises my heart chakra and comes from a meditation I was taught, where from the heart you send out love to all living creatures. Some parts of the map are embroidered with old English names for the animals. Really, I have made a map of home, the place I love.
Maggie Smales
Here They Arrived
The image is based on a view of Boggle Hole near Robin Hoods Bay and Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast. This was where the Vikings arrived to subsequently occupy Britain. I had a hand painted piece of silk depicting a Viking boat and cut it up to create the image of the land from the sea as it is today so there is a ‘then’ and ‘now’ element to the work as well as land and sea. The colours were important as I wanted to capture the unique coloration of the coast and an earthiness that I would associate with the traditional images we are familiar with depicting Viking culture.
Amanda Smith
The Sea ‘Down Under’
Two years ago, I visited my daughter in Australia. We spent a lot of time on the coast walking along beautiful huge sandy beaches and admiring the waves (and the surfers). Earlier this year I did the online workshop with Jan Beaney and Jean Littlejohn taking a stitch and ‘going with it’. That prompted this piece which was sewn using mainly twisted chain stitch but with some French knots and running stitches thrown in for good luck.
Amanda Smith
Land and Sea
I did a workshop this summer with Amanda Hislop entitled ‘Land and Sea’ which seemed providential! Thoroughly enjoyed using my memories of seascapes in Australia when I visited my daughter to paint fabric and paper and then collage together with stitch.
Joyce Smith
Cornish Seaweed and Pebbles
I often pick up interesting seaweed and stones from beaches when out walking.
I sketched this seaweed and several pebbles in a concertina sketchbook. I chose an section to interpret in stitch on a background of blue fabric to represent the sea.
Julie Stenning
A Moment of Reflection
I wasn’t inspired by anything in particular, other than by the desire to create an image that fits with the theme “land and sea”.
I decided that looking at the land from the sea gave more options than the other way around.
My concept was “a person on a ship looking out. He sees the sparkling sea and a tropical island with a mountain in the background”.
Hannah Thompson
Harbour Fishing Boats
During a summer holiday in St Ives, Cornwall, a couple of years ago I took a sketchbook and of an evening would make a few sketches of interesting things I had seen during the day. This piece was a reflection on the harbourside with cottages along the road behind and fishing boats bobbing around on the harbour. The piece was created from collected textiles from clothing, samples books and long forgotten sources. Working with Bond-a-web to create the colour blocks and houses, details were added by both machine free motion stitching and hand embroidery. Small fragments of fabrics and lace were added to give a sense of waves in the harbour.
Elspeth Thomson
Beachy Head
I was hugely inspired by a recent summer visit to Beachy Head in East Sussex. The gentle blue of the sky reflected in the sea and in sharp contrast to the black pebbles and pale chalk spheres on the beach. The calm lapping of the sea that day belying its immense power and capricious nature. I felt very small in such a vast seascape.
I have utilised techniques of applique of frayed organza, wool tops and other fibres and fabrics with felting needles to add texture and depth, then free machine with invisible and viscose threads to try and capture this serene but awe-inspiring moment in time.
Susan Willis
Land and Sea: A Game of Pairs
Quite a few words can be preceded by “sea”. In some instances, this totally changes the meaning. In other cases, it highlights a similarity between the “land” and the “sea” versions.
The subject also allowed for a little humour, and the chance to stitch new subjects, including people, animals and birds. I also experimented with some of the stitches included in the Embroiderer’s Guild Hand Embroidery courses. I turned the land and sea variations into a game of pairs, with a slight twist. As a child, I loved playing pairs – it was the one game that I had a chance of winning!
Lesley Wood
Above Waist/Waste Level
Above waist/waste level references the rising sea levels and the increase of flooding worldwide due to climate change. Thousands of gallons of water are used to produce one pair of denim jeans, so it felt right to choose and reclaim old denim jeans to create this fabric collage, giving an extended life to the fabric. Central to the piece is a partly submerged hand embroidered figure with waves of fabric washing over her. The title is a play on words, with the water’s depth being above waist high and the waste of water.
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