The Fabric Painting Movement

The Sewing Workshop has had the distinct pleasure of forming a relationship with Sarah Campbell, the renowned textile artist living in London. I first took a painting workshop from her in London (twice) and then she came to Topeka for a trunk show and week-long workshop. Last spring, the Sewing Workshop again set up a workshop with her, this time in the Cotswolds outside of London. You can never take too many workshops from Sarah - every one of them is different.

I recently wrote an article about her for Threads magazine, Fall 2025, Number 231. The article highlighted the work of 60+ years and featured her working with many well-known designers both in fashion and home interiors. Her most famous book is The Collier Campbell Archive, 50+ years of Passion in Pattern and her latest DIY book is Hand-Painted Textiles, A Practical Guide to the Art of Painting on Fabric. She gives it all away in this book. The article featured lots of exquisite photographs of dresses and other pieces of cloth for various customers, but in this Substack article, I would like to show you some of the photographs that we love but did not make the Threads article.

I love seeing Sarah in her own space. It’s full of color and pattern for which she is famous.

Here are some of our students painting in her workshop.

Sarah’s show and tell is always so inspiring.

And her painted shoes. We all rushed out and bought the store out of Vans. I went through a big shoe-painting phase.

We learned to cut potatoes to use as stencils. And how to use other tools of the trade.

We contracted with Sarah to design two fabrics for us. She named them Pastiche (left) and Little Jazz Bird (right). We used Little Jazz Bird for our new Byrd Blouse pattern. And Sarah designed fabric for Free Spirit Fabrics and illustrated our patterns using her fabrics. She used our Spring St. Blouse, the Hugo Top and Village Bag, the Haiku Two Jacket and West End Pants and the Eureka Top and Six Sense Skirt.

You can tell that we love Sarah Campbell. I hope you will read the Threads article and research her books - and join the fabric painting movement.

I hope everyone has a restful and wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.

Cheers to having fresh laundry,

~LL