During the Selvedge Textile Tour to India, the group visited the innovative textile company BODHI. Set up in 1983 by designer Mala Pradeep Sinha, BODHI is now a small enterprise with a team of highly skilled printers and dyers and an extended group of women who embroider and applique from their homes. The company is dedicated to sustainability. The team use solar energy to bake pigment printed fabrics and to heat water; they conserve water by using as little as possible and harvesting rainwater, which is stored for use through the year and used to recharge ground water. They also...

Image: this image appeared in Vogue UK, August 2000, photographer Tim Walker, knits Giles Deacon, stylist Kate Phelan. We look back at an archive issue of Selvedge from 2014, Issue 60 Knit. Available as a digital magazine to download, it includes photography of the island of Harris and its tweed by Ian Lawson, a free dish towel pattern from Purl Soho and a history of Fair Isle. Knitting is a technique for creating cloth by looping a single thread. As each row progresses, a new loop is pulled through an existing loop. The structure is intrinsically weaker than a woven...

Image: Emma Talbot, Pictured with When Screens Break, 2020. Photo: Thierry Bal. Emma Talbot has won the 8th edition of the Max Mara Art Prize for Women. This prize supports UK-based female artists who have not previously had a major solo exhibition. Awarded in alternate years since 2005, it is the only visual art prize of its kind in the UK. As the winner Talbot will spend six months in Italy on a bespoke residency planned for later this year, creating a new body of work to be shown in 2021 first at the Whitechapel Gallery and then at the...

Hostem Archive, the shop at Blue Mountain School, an art space in East London, is stocking a new body of work by artist Amy Revier. Focused on the nature of duality, cashmere coats have been built in double using a method new to Revier’s practice to create fully reversible worlds. Each coat explores the idea of dichotomy: between our inner and outer selves, separation and connection, things disclosed and undisclosed, folded and unfolded, revealed and concealed. The reversible coats are built by doubleweave, an intensive process of weaving two textiles simultaneously, one layered on top of the other on the...

Image: Leah Higgins, Ruins 9: Cottonopolis. An upcoming exhibition at the Rheged Centre, Cumbria, is showcasing contemporary textile art from the north of England and Scotland. ‘T’ is for Textiles features work demonstrating a diverse range of styles and techniques and touches on the textile heritage of the North. It opens 27 March. It includes three quilts from textile artist and printmaker Leah Higgins, inspired by the cotton industry in Salford and Manchester; Ruins 9: Cottonopolis (pictured) Ruins 10: Salford Mills and Ruins 11: Bridgewater. Leah lives and works in Manchester. Talking about her work, she says: “The city and...