Julia Caprara

Sad news that Julia Caprara has died. I attended her classes at City Lit for years in the heady days of the mid-90s, when she was head of textiles there and brought in many well-known tutors for short courses and one-day workshops. She was very, very important (indeed, seminal) in my textile and artistic development - a teacher who encouraged students to develop in their own paths, rather than imposing her own. She introduced us to many embroidery techniques that are now being used by quilters for surface design and embellishment, but most of all she sought to develop creativity and critical skills in her pupils at City Lit and latterly at Opus School of Textile Arts.

Thanks to Julia I have copious sketchbooks, to which I refer often (isn't it interesting how one's early themes keep coming back?). One of my favourites started with her postcard of two huge jars at Knossos and developed into a series of embroidered felt pieces about "old pots"- this one was shown in one of the "Cloth and Stitch" exhibitions that Julia masterminded while at City Lit.

We met on a train once, going north - she was going to Leeds to give a talk and I was going to Halifax to see a Quilters Guild exhibition at Dean Clough, 7-8 years ago - and we had a congenial journey, sitting and chatting and stitching, and exchanging threads. Here's a detail of the piece I was working on -
Julia's thread is the pale green used for seeding on the left. Seeding - that's so appropriate for her role in my creative life.