Jenni Stuart-Anderson

Jenni Stuart-Anderson designs and makes projects including rag rugs and wall hangings, using recycled textiles, sourced locally. Moving to Herefordshire from London, where she taught spatial design at an art college, Jenni found freelance design and commuting incompatible with early motherhood and asked a local woman to show her the traditional rag rug techniques she had been doing for 50 years. So many people asked her how to do it Jenni started sharing them in 1987. She has been teaching vintage techniques at workshops, summer schools and craft fairs ever since, exhibiting and upcycling to commission. She is keen to see what was a thrift activity with little status become a heritage craft and she enjoys sharing such a therapeutic activity and helping people to discover their creativity through simple, enjoyable techniques accessible to adults and children of most abilities.

• One-off rugs, seat mats, wall hangings
• Bespoke commissions
• By post – project kits, to make at home
• By post – signed copies of how-to book: More Rag Rugs & Recycled Textile Projects, plus rag rug making hand tools
• By post – DVDs Rag Rug Workshop/Jenni Stuart-Anderson (see clip on YouTube)
• Day and weekend courses at different venues to learn vintage techniques
• Gives talks locally on rag rug making

Her early visual inspiration came from lore and ethnic art, plus art movements and always with Nature as a major source. In the tradition of rag rug making, if you run out of one fabric, you have to use another which she calls ”organic design”!

Jenni upgraded her teaching skills with City & Guilds Further & Adult Education Teaching Certificates, Stages 1 and 2 and in 2003 she received Innovation & Development assistance from the European Regional Development fund to study weaving. Jenni offers rag rug making workshops at different venues and makes and sells kits for people working from home, which have become more popular this year: she is happy to offer back-up advice to people by email or telephone.

She was invited to write Rag Rug Making, published in 2003, with four subsequent reprints (sold out), followed in 2011 by More Rag Rugs & Recycled Textile Projects (Traplet Publications). A new publisher invited her to write her next rag rug book, due out in 2021 (watch this space). Jenni works from home and sells online or through local galleries.

Trade memberships / Awards / Qualifications

Member of Creative Breaks, art/craft course providers www.creativebreaks.co.uk
Member of Worcestershire Guild – contemporary Craft www.worcestershireguild.co.uk
Member of the Heritage Crafts Association
Member of www.lowimpact.org
City & Guilds Further & Adult Education Teaching Certificates, Stages 1 and 2

Contact

The Birches, Middleton-on-the-Hill, Leominster, Herefordshire HR6 0HN

Telephone: 01568 750229

Email: jenni.ragrugs@freeuk.com

Website: www.jenniragrugs.com

Social Media

Facebook: /Jenni’s-Rag-Rugs-332713700090692
Instagram: jenniragrugs