Welcome to my website
Thank you for visiting. This space isn’t always perfectly up to date — I’m usually busy discovering something new about textiles, stitching, or drawing.
I’m an artist, researcher, stitcher, tutor, and lifelong textile enthusiast. My practice combines a deep love of drawing with the tactile, material world of cloth and thread to create work that is thoughtful, layered, and meaningful.
I explore questions of identity through art and stitch. The imagery and lines in my work are often informed by drawings of my surroundings, and by the connections I encounter between communities, cultures, and making traditions. Stitch, for me, is both a visual language and a way of thinking.
If you’d like to see current projects and travels, you can follow along here:
📸 Instagram | 📘 Facebook
For enquiries, collaborations, or conversations about textiles, please feel free to get in touch. You can email me @ helenamandasill@gmail.com
I love talking about textiles and working with others to share skills and ideas. I deliver a range of talks on textile traditions and my contemporary practice, and I teach classes in hand stitch, drawing, and mixed media. Workshops include stitch-based techniques such as Indian-style embroidery, Kawandi, Sashiko-inspired methods, freestyle stitch, indigo dyeing, and sketchbook development. My teaching is rooted in both practical skill-building and thoughtful engagement with material culture.
TOURS/TRAVEL
I have a long-standing fascination with South Asian textiles. I first visited Gujarat and Agra in 2018 and was immediately captivated by the depth and diversity of textile traditions there. Since then, I have returned to Gujarat several times to learn more about regional embroidery practices and to work alongside makers. I currently host textile tours to India and Uzbekistan in collaboration with the Indian-based tour company Aahilya. Recent journeys have taken us to West Bengal and Odisha, as well as Bengal, Nagaland, Assam, Delhi, and Rajasthan. In 2024, I also travelled to Uzbekistan for textile research.
Upcoming tours include Jaipur in February 2025 and Uzbekistan in March 2026, with further dates planned for 2027. These are carefully curated, immersive experiences focused on meeting artisans, learning about regional techniques, and understanding textiles within their cultural contexts.
I also spent time trekking and researching textiles in Morocco and Nepal — always searching, sketchbook and needle in hand.
Textiles connect people, histories, and places. My work — whether in the studio, classroom, or on the road — is rooted in that belief. If you’d like to work together, attend a workshop, join a tour, or simply talk textiles, I would be delighted to hear from you.
Check out the Aahilya holidays website for details of my UPCOMING Textile Tours:
I am currently researching South East Asian textiles and teach a range of hand stitch classes…. Contact me by email or social media (not through this website) for details or look at SewCreative Workshops and Talks for classes I teach in Petersfield, Hampshire.
Other stuff:
https://mrxstitch.com/helen-sill//helen-sill/
BIT OF BACKGROUND
I was an Embroiderers’ Guild Graduate and Guild Scholar and completed a Masters Degree in Fine Art in 2021 where my research interests were around making and community focusing on the rich textile traditions of Gujarat in North West India and the North East of England.
Past commissions have included work for West Dean Gardens, the Petersfield Museum and being Artist in Resident at Chichester Festival Theatre. My work is in private and public collections.
Granularity of language….
helen sill 