Getting creative with Jan Kilpatrick, writes Jane Rae

When Jan Kilpatrick introduced me to the pleasure of spending an entire day with your hands immersed in dye, creating an unknown cocktail of colour mixes and following a design created entirely there and then with wax, I knew that I was hooked

Almost a year after my foray into the world of batik, I'd booked myself into one of Jan's week long courses entitled "Textile Illuminations" in Ullapool, in the Highlands of Scotland. The course was described as a textiles workshop where students could experiment with various ways of painting and printing cloth. These skills would be further developed by layering, dissecting, patching and embellishing fabric to produce intricate pieces of textile. Some people go for spa breaks and some of us prefer to get creative so I ditched my one piece of luggage mentality, loaded up the car with my sewing machine, dye-friendly clothes and several back issues of Popular Patchwork and headed north.

Jan Kilpatrick has explored a variety of roles in her working life, including that of English teacher and upholsterer. Increasingly drawn towards more creative pursuits she launched Wild Tiles in the 1990s focussing on mosaics and undertaking commission and classes. Not to be restricted by just one creative strand, Wild Textiles and more recently, Wild Text, have also emerged and Jan has established herself as an artist and teacher under the much broader umbrella of mixed media. Working throughout Scotland, Jan has a full programme of courses for 2008 including "A Quilt in Five Days", "Rags to Riches" and "Creative Journals on the Summer Isles". In and amongst her scheduled classes, she is happy to rove around the country bringing her enthusiasm and skills to groups looking for bespoke events. Interspersed with her teaching, she also finds the time to develop her own skills, work on her commissions and create new pieces for display in a number of Scottish Galleries.

Having relocated in the last few years to Elphin, a crafting township north of Ullapool, her dream is to create a purpose built studio for herself and her students to enjoy. Taking the opportunity to chat to Jan in and amongst buckets of dye and pots of heated wax, I discover that she has found a creative haven in UIlapool and a perfect home for her planned studio. This endearing village on the shores of Lochbroom offers an active arts community embracing writers, artists, weavers and many more like-minded individuals who are lured and inspired by the beauty of the Western Isles.

I chose the Textile Illuminations course as it offered a real variety of content and suggested many possibilities to me. Having now completed the week I appreciate that it was the perfect way to benefit from the diverse experiences and skills that Jan has acquired in her own creative journey. Whilst the course had a definite structure which included demonstrations, hands-on time, design development and the chance to share and learn from each other, there was no pressure to produce a specific piece at the end of the week. Jan's philosophy is very much "laissez-faire" in this respect giving students just the right amount of encouragement and guidance to allow them to tap into their own creative energy. "I like to spend as much of my energy encouraging others, through workshops and courses, to see beyond self-imposed limitations and to find their own means of creative expression", says Jan. I think it would be safe to say that each of us taking part found our creative expression. With a different technique and theme explored on each day, we literally started off with a blank canvass that in five days became a textile illumination.

Day one was spent learning some principles of basic dyeing and batik, a method which uses wax to make areas of fabric resistant to dye. We dyed a variety of small sections of white cotton to give us the foundations of our own stash box and spent the day waxing, re-dipping and experimenting with a variety of colour combinations.

The weather conditions weren't the most favourable for drying fabric but we managed dry and re-dip several pieces over 24 hrs and day two was spent re-waxing, re-dipping and ironing off the wax from completed samples. Jan showed us how to apply dye directly to fabric using brushes and glass tiles as a medium for transferring a pattern etched into the dye. The end results surprised and delighted us as we could transform lifeless or over-dyed pieces of fabric into swatches with new potential.

With a burgeoning stash of vastly different pieces of fabric, Jan asked us to take strips of fabric and experiment with piecing them together using decorative machine stitching, free machine stitching and contrasting threads. Using vylene for backing we created miniature strippy quilt tops that were recycled into our end projects.

Day three was spent adding further layers of embellishment to our dyed samples using machine stitching, couching (embroidery method which attaches thick threads to the surface of a material using stitches) and trim created from remnants of ribbon, string, wool and just about all forms of recycled material. In fact, Jan encourages her students to combine recycled and natural materials finding that "each has their own history and patina that gives fresh life to each work". We experimented with melting plastic onto fabric, trapping threads, leaves and other random items into plastic and integrating these into our textile samples. We even produced our own shisha (mirror work used in Gujarati embroidery) using old pieces of foil packaging stitched onto fabric.

Towards the end of the week Jan encouraged us to produce a finished piece that brought together all of our samples and new skills learnt through the week. As it turned out, we all seemed to be moving in different directions with no two projects bearing any resemblance to each other. Inspired by a toran (decorative Indian wall hanging) that Jan had shown us as a sample, I decided to assemble my pieces into my own toran. Others worked on book jackets, cushion covers, wall hangings and handbags. It was with a great sense of achievement that I left Jan's class with a completed piece that only five days ago had been separate pieces of white cotton. We had brought to life discarded remnants of old table cloths and bed sheets, wool, buttons and plastic - altogether a truly weird and wonderful assortment of materials - and created something new and original.

I will look back fondly on my week in UIlapool spent with Jan and my other fellow students learning new skills, sharing ideas, chatting over well deserved cups of coffee and walking back to my Bed & Breakfast at night whilst the evening ferry to the Stornoway pulled out of the harbour. For some of us, the luxury of taking time out of your busy life and immersing yourself in creative pursuits for an entire week is almost out of the question but if you can manage to allocate a bit of "me" time in 2008 then I would definitely recommend it.

Jan's full programme of classes is listed on her website: www.wildtiles.co.uk. She has two, week-long courses coming up in March in Crieff and Ullapool entitled "A quilt in five days". What a great way to start off the Spring!

For those of you wondering what level the classes are pitched at, Jan's courses are targeted at all levels and at the "Textile Illuminations" course we had a virgin stitcher sitting side-by-side with a lecturer in textiles. The beauty of the course is that you can go at your own pace. Many teachers attend Jan's classes as part of their own continuous professional development and she'd be only too delighted to provide more information on this if you're interested. You can contact Jan via email: jan@wildtiles.co.uk
(March 2008)