Are you interested in combining nature and textiles? Recently, we interviewed artist Sarah Boon about her amazing work recreating natural textures using textile techniques. Here is what she had to say about her process.

What led you to combine nature and textiles in your pieces?

I love walking around my local area of Bolton, especially in the local woodland of Horrocks woods, Smithills estate and Dunscar wood and I found it fascinating how nature creates its own textures and patterns with soft moss growing on stone walls, how lichen grows on trees creating interesting textures and colours and wild mushrooms growing in the landscape and started to take photographs of these.

I have just finished my degree in 2025 at the University of Bolton in textile surface design, and for my final semester, we had creative freedom to produce work for our final show on any theme we liked. I decided to use the photographs I had taken as my original inspiration to produce three pieces of textile art, and whilst experimenting with different ideas, one of the tutors gave me a block of wood with an interesting pattern on it, and I decided to reproduce the pattern using free machine embroidery and then adhere it to the wood, which worked really well. So, for my final three pieces, I decided to recreate images from the photos I had taken using textiles but combine it with real tree bark to make people really look at the pieces and discover that aspects of it were actually reproduced in textiles and stitch.

What techniques do you apply to achieve such detailed results?

The mushrooms were reproduced using hand embroidery stitches, mostly long and short stitches; the moss was recreated using hand embroidery using a stitch called a French knot multiple times and I tried to match the colours of the photographs with the embroidery floss I used. Large patches of lichen were created using free motion embroidery again trying to match the colours with sewing thread by Gutterman. There is a small number of hot textiles used where synthetic material called organza was manipulated with a heat gun to shrink and moulded it into the very small red mushroom cups.

Are there any techniques you tried that just didn’t work for what you wanted?

I did try to use actual pieces of moss in the pieces but once it dries out it loses its colour and doesn't adhere well to bark. I also tried floristry moss but it continually fell off.

Who are some artists that continue to inspire your work?

My two favourite textile artists are Sue Hotchkis and Amanda Corbett, and they both provided inspiration for my work. Sue Hotchkis produces some amazing abstract textile art pieces, which are inspired by photographs of rust; she then reproduces these photos by transferring the images onto fabric and then using heavy, dense stitching on a sewing machine to reproduce the colours.

Amanda Cobbett is a textile artist who recreates nature's undergrowth using a sewing machine and dissolvable fabric to produce sculptural pieces of mushrooms, lichen and moss that look like the real thing. Amazing work.

Do you think it’s important for creatives to have community spaces to work from?

Yes, definitely. Working with other creatives can often give you ideas for new projects, you can talk out your ideas if you get stuck with an idea and seeing how other creatives approach their work can be a valuable insight and ultimately expand your own creative practice. Working alone can be good sometimes, but can also be very isolating and seeing other creatives struggling with their ideas can remind you that you're not alone and that others also have the same struggles and creative block sometimes.

Do you have any exhibitions or new pieces coming up?

I am currently in the development stage of designing a new textile piece to enter into the Farfield Mill, Cumbria textile art competition on the theme of Metamorphosis for 2026.

If you like Sarah’s work and want to find out more follow her on Instagram, @TextileArtistSarah, or visit her website.