At the opening for The Magic of Needle and Thread, the Embroiderers’ Guild exhibition, Rachel Ratten will give a talk titled A journey from paint to thread. She will discuss her experiences with both quilting and freeform embroidery and her opposing approaches to these media.

Rachel graduated with a Master of Fine Arts from University of Canterbury in 2015. A figurative painter with a deep yearning for abstraction, she was determined to crack it with paint, but it just did not have the outcome that she wanted. Now Rachel produces textile-based “paintings” based on the formal elements of design.