Katrina Wilde

Сурва, Перник Surva, Pernik Bulgaria January 2026 Me and @nadinewilde_ washed the winter away in January in Bulgaria and went to Surva masquerade/folk festival in Pernik, alongside some other road trips in search of goat hair as you do. We had planned this maybe 5 years earlier but our trip then took a turn an opposite direction to Chiprovtsi - a small weaving village in the north/west of Bulgaria. It was joyous and loud and full of texture. So many people gathered together to wonder at folk traditions and costumes and textiles and dance and parading. A weekend full of textiles and people and nature and craft and people’s connection to seasons and traditions taking so many different forms. Photos & videos are a mix of Кукери / Сурвакари {Kukeri and Survakari}, masquerades from Balkan countries, roadside views in Rhodopite, textiles in the Regional History/Craft Museum in Smolyan and @nadinewilde_ ❣️

The Textiles Project is a growing, design and making project in which we created a collection of hand-printed textiles for soft furnishings for our future Building, with colour that came from the plants in our neighbourhood 🌱🌼 Alongside the Upholstery Course taught by Katie @meticulous_restoration we’ve been screenprinting fabrics that are being sewn into cushions for our future Building! A group of neighbours - Alicia, Angelica, Drya, Dlyar, Funmi and Sazgar with Katrina, designed and screenprinted the fabrics for the cushion tops. Then, we took screenprinting to the neighbourhood where everyone got involved and printed around 10 metres of fabric, inspired by our local ecology, with colour that we’ve grown and gathered locally, building our connections with the more than human in our neighbourhood🧚‍♂️ we screenprinted on some deadstock cotton and linen (originally from Edinburgh Weavers - but it had small faults and marks in). We’ve had lots of conversations about materials and sustainable choices when designing too. 🧵 our Upholstery team - Anna, Danni, Kerry, Kerri, Nana, Rachel, Sandra, alongside Katie and Dina @_dinainez began to piece everything together.. which we’ll share in another post! 🪡 💌 Over the course of the project (so far), together we did a total of 601 hours of collective learning + making + doing, through workshops, gardening, sewing, screenprinting, learning new skills, building on previous learning and coming together to create beautiful things.

“Сироп от бъз / Elderberry Syrup” 50x70cm 4 colour* screen print Signed & number edition of 30. Available to purchase & open to swaps or bartering. Screenprinted at @nopoint_atelier during my residency in September. Always drawn to the patchworks of houses & blocks in Bulgaria, creating these little compositions of shapes colours & textures that always take me back to textiles. Patchworks like little windows into otherworldly portals. Was nice to move onto paper for a moment. Smells sweet like the end of summer or like a grape smelly gel pen iykyk. *4 colour separation, but actually printed with the concoction of many gathered local (to Balinite) plants and a bit of food waste too: elderberry, onion, thyme, walnut and walnut leaves, oak galls, wild basil, pomegranate, oak leaves, madders, grape (inspired by @flo_hawkins recipe she shared during a course I attended) Thanks @floorsabelis for photo 1 and @nopoint_atelier for photo 5.

@katrinawilde did some screen printing with her own inks that she made from herbs and plants around Nopoint. Was a fun and interesting process. Thank you Katrina!

𝘈 𝘠𝘦𝘢𝘳 𝘰𝘧 𝘎𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘪𝘯𝘨 installation at @airspacegallery April 2024 Window installation / voile dyed with plants is grown and saved - scabiosa, weld, coreopsis, cosmos, onion. 🧅 the last 2 images are of @nadinewilde_ ‘s piece of work, that repurposed the dyed textile (Sakiori) to respond to a commission at the Japan Embassy in London earlier this year, ‘Sustainable Textile Futures: Contemporary Design Responses to Traditional Japanese Craft’ Sharing a bit from our @groundworkshops project from early last year with dear friends @natajkasprzycka & @jessicamason_ceramics . A day of seed sowing, workshops, films and really lovely energy from everyone who came down to our installation at @airspacegallery , reflection on a little over a year of holding workshops and space for play in Stoke, working with brilliant artists, each other and with the materials and nature/the more-than-human. As this project draws to a close for us, i’m reflecting on how fortunate and privileged we are to be able to do the sort of work we are want, to explore nature and work with it, to test things and work with people, to create space for play and questions.

🧵The Textiles Project, co-designed and led by team member @katrinawilde is a growing, designing and making project, where we are creating beautiful fabrics with living colour for soft furnishings in our future building. 🫶We’re thinking about materials, about colour, where things come from and how to tread lightly when creating new things 🌱
 This year, we’ve grown plants and foraged for local colour, screen printed, dyed, drawn, sewn, and upholstered and shortly we’ll be heading into a (small) production phase! 🌞 We began with extending our growing area around the Pippin to create a small Neighbourhood Artist’s Garden, built by Glen, despite a few growing challenges we’ve gathered lots of plants to make colour with 🪡 A group of women from our neighbourhood have been learning skills in upholstery alongside Katie from @meticulous_restoration , off-site at Katrina’s studio, where we’ve learned how to make a box cushions and how to repurpose old furniture - and we’ll use this learning to create pieces for the building 🌷 We’ve done lots of screen printing and natural dyeing on the street to date, and this summer was no different, testing some neighbourhood-grown flowers for printing with, alongside some brilliant drawing workshops also alongside Kidda @kiddakinsey , drawing from the nature and local ecology around the Pippin, creating drawings, cut-outs and collages to inform our designs ※ Katrina recently attended a brilliant Natural Dye Screen Printing course led by Florence and Lara at @ceres_naturaldyesprints sharing their knowledge, developing her print and dyeing skills with natural colour, learning which will be shared in our neighbourhood and we’ll be screen printing fabrics that will be made in to floor cushions, book nooks and other soft surfaces 🙌 October and November will be all about printing, dyeing and sewing! More on this for our neighbours in a couple of weeks but we can’t wait to share the pieces we have made together for our building 💘 Made by many hands, this has been an amazing collaborative project so far between neighbours, artists, team, materials and nature 🌻 more to come soon!

Had such a fun evening last night at @track_pickleclub @trackbrewingco with @hollpickles where we dyed textiles with food waste from pickles we were also making. They’ll be transformed in to garlands for Pickle Fest in September - see @track_pickleclub for more info ! Proper wholesome vibes where everyone brings little offerings of veg to communally pickle, one person brought a 3 year fermented hemp seed and barley koji shed made that was out of this world and gave everyone some to take home 🩷 the power of pickles and fermenting and colour 🥒

Me & Dina @_dinainez were commissioned by @uhnmcharity to create banners for International Women’s Day & to celebrate Eid with the hospital’s Muslim (and non-Muslim) community at the Royal Stoke hospital 💫 For women’s day, we were invited down to the main building at the Royal Stoke hospital, and basically set up our studio there. We cut, collaged and chatted - it was really special hearing from different people their experiences as students, patients, staff, passers by, new mums, and more. Lots of things came up for people - often the amount of plate spinning that so many women do, the juggling and balancing acts. The care that underpins so much of work, life, love we do as women. On the 26th March, we were invited to the hospital’s Iftar (breaking the fast - first with 3 dates and a bottle of water, followed by lots amazing food) just a couple of days before Eid back in March. For both of us, being non-Muslim, it was so special to be invited to the Iftar and being warmly welcomed to share space, conversation, food and connection with people observing Ramadan. There was so much openness, care and community that actually feels quite rare. It was really something. The banners will be displayed in the hospital - location TBD! All textiles were studio remnants, a mix of naturally dyed, vintage, and remnant textiles. Special thanks to Gemma @gemmaloudavies and Sadaf! 🌞

In no particular order, some work and other things from the last 3 months 1. Hand painted and screen-printed works with different plants mostly weld, walnut, chestnut, tannin, logwood, madder, tansy, iron in the Staffs print room part of my @aa2aproject residency 2. Risograph tests from layered paintings also @aa2aproject 3. Small paintings of walnut, pomegranate, indigo for @thehost.store 4. Viewfinder at a bird sanctuary just on the edge of Antanavasko lake in Burgas 5. Viewfinder at Haywood high school as part of a print project I’m doing with @piclstokecep and year 7, 8 and 9 6. Stencils for screen printing & the cutest squeegees ever also @aa2aproject 7. A project with @dinainez_ textile banner commission by @uhnmcharity workshop from international women’s day at the hospital 8. Notes from life drawings 9. Cyanotype workshop with Haywood @piclstokecep 10. Indigo paste paint test / a painting that didn’t move much further 11. Notes from life drawing 12. A very lovely allotment day with so many lovey people on our @groundworkshops site 13. Print test table at staffs for @aa2aproject 14. T-shirts for @hikerdelic 15. Our grandmas door we painted @nadinewilde_ 16. Tansy from the allotment for the @hikerdic ts 17. Learning to knit for the 10th time 18. A gift of potatoes from Ani @digitalcoiling 19. Deep time in action visiting @natajkasprzycka 20. Me by Nicola at gardening club @theportlandinnprojectcic

Happy first day of spring 🌱 sunny Stoke is really coming through on the equinox today! 🌞 👨‍🌾 Last year, we took a bit of time getting to know the allotment site we’re tending to. Situated just down the road from Stoke Train Station, it’s a huge site where we’re thinking about materials, the earth, artistic practices and how they’re all interconnected. We’re learning about the space, about growing, and we’d love to share the space more and so… This weekend, on Saturday 22nd, come down to the allotment to find out a bit more about the space, our volunteer dates and if you’d like to be involved. Send us a DM and we’ll give you some more information 💘 (Yes picture 4 is a bed that was full of bindweed, 🙃no we didn’t dig it all out, yes we grew a lot of stuff on the bed, yes it did seem like it didn’t grow back as much!)

Friends! We have Open Studios this weekend ! Come down and say hello 👋 Happening tomorrow (Saturday 30th November) we’ll have our studio doors open from 11am. We’ll have some small works also for sale - a £5 print lucky dip, plant dyed ribbons, small studies, plus some pieces for sale from @beauprichard and @threadgoodfinds too 💥 so come down for nice last minute plans and spend some time with us and everyone else down at @acavaspodeworks hope to see you there and hope you see our very last minute invite 💌

Little snippets of our Gardening Club from earlier in the year @theportlandinnprojectcic 💚 with the best team of gardeners 🌱