Hazel Bell – Textile Artist
Hazel studied art, design and textiles at college. After qualifying, she taught art and creative textiles for many years. Now that her family are nearly adult, she feels she can now concentrate on developing her love of creative embroidery.
She shows her work in several galleries throughout the country and has exported work to USA, France and Australia. She is a member of several embroidery groups.
Hazel takes her inspiration from the beautiful countryside of the Peak District. She watches the changing seasons, looking at nature in detail, making sketches and taking in the colours which are so important. At this stage, she can often visualise the finished scene in machine lines and surface stitch.
Hazel uses natural fabrics – cotton, muslin, linen and silk, dyed to get the natural variety of colours that she needs to give a subtle richness and depth to her work.
Using her notes and sketches as a guide, she builds up the background to her landscape, free machining field lines and adding the dyed fabrics and applying machine embroidery. The foreground is then developed using a variety of techniques, incorporating surface stitch and decoration.