Saturday 25 February 2023, Meet Sarah Burns

16:00 - 17:00 GMT (Greenwich Mean Time)

Online event, hosted on Zoom by Sarah Burns

Sarah Burns is a natural forager, exploring and reviving natural dyes and pigments from the plants and flowers she finds close to her Sussex workshop. She uses foraged natural dyes to create striking and organic patterns in hand block printed textiles. Prior to running her own textile printing studio, Sarah studied Politics at Jesus College, Cambridge and Textile Design at Chelsea College of Art. Now a pattern-maker, textile printer and teacher, her fabrics are inspired by natural, seasonal materials and the places near where she lives and works on the South Downs. 

Her fabrics are hand block printed in her Sussex workshop using natural foraged dyes and pigments. Her patterns have been commissioned by the Dartington Trust and the Virginia White Collection and Cloth Collective. She co-authored the first monograph on pioneering 1930's textile designers Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher and is committed to reviving ancient techniques like natural dyeing and block printing that are centred on zero waste and carbon neutral making processes.

Meet the Maker event description
Sarah Burns will talk about her life as patterns - how she created her Map of the World Patterns (gathering over 50 pattern stories from around the world which she printed and stitched into a quilt and how this led her to study as a mature student at Chelsea College of Art and then to work as a hand printer at one of the last remaining screen printing factories in England where she learnt the craft of fabric printing. She will talk about the pioneering work of English block printers Phyllis Barron & Dorothy Larcher and how came to write the first monograph about them and their ground-breaking work with natural dyes. How she established her own practice on the South Downs working primarily with natural dyes and the plants and flowers which grow around her in the fields and hedgerows of Sussex. Sarah will talk about the ancient craft of chintz making (using mineral and vegetable mordants and dyes to create colours) and how, with a contemporary twist, it offers us opportunities to create beautiful textiles in a regenerative way - fundamentally changing the carbon footprint of textiles and its relationship with the natural world around us. 

This event is interactive and questions are encouraged throughout.

Sarah Burns will also be running an online workshop, Pattern Making, on Saturday 3 & Saturday 10 June 2023. Book your place on our website: Saturday 3 & Saturday 10 June 2023, Pattern Making with Sarah Burns

Event recording
The event will be recorded and a recording sent to ticket holders after the event. Please allow 7 workings days for us to send you the recording.

Cancellation policy
All Meet the Maker sessions are non-refundable.