Lora Avedian: the textile artist making intricate floral designs

Textile artist Lora Avedian has followed a slightly unusual career path, as she started her professional life as a set designer working on fashion and photography shoots. “I was making a lot of paper props and paper flowers. I really enjoyed making these beautiful, natural objects and trying to replicate nature in a different material,” she says. However, after seven years, she eventually tired of making intricate objects that were thrown away following every shoot. “I wanted to start making things that people could actually use,” she says.

A former tutor suggested she sign up for the MA in Mixed Media Textiles at the Royal College of Art, which allowed her to change direction. She had always been interested in textiles, but it was quite a leap. “It felt a bit of a crazy decision at the time, but I’m glad I did it.” Her gamble paid off and, after graduating in 2017, Lora successfully set up her own business producing a range of soft furnishings, including boldly patterned cushions, wall hangings and lampshades as well as delicate floral collages. She is primarily interested in texture and works mainly in embroidery, a technique that allows her to add relief to the fabric surface as well as pattern. “It’s all about tactility and colour,” she says. “I love using different textures such as shiny and matt, putting them next to each other and trying to create texture in my work.”

Lora spent the summer working on a new collection of soft furnishings embroidered with large echinacea flowers. The designs start life as rough sketches and then Lora scales the drawings up, transferring them first on to tracing paper and then on to the fabric. Although the designs seem relatively simple, closer inspection reveals how much surface variety Lora is able to introduce by using different techniques and materials. The cone-shaped flowerheads are created with grid-like rows of ricrac (zigzag-shaped braid), while the spiky petals are formed using single lengths of carefully folded, ribbed viscose ribbon. Both are held in place by couching, a method of embroidery in which materials laid across the surface of a fabric are held in place by smaller stitches. Originally Lora did this by hand but has now worked out a way of stitching the ribbon and braid down using her sewing machine. “I stitch a bit, then fold it over, then stitch it down a bit more and then fold it back on itself. It’s a bit like origami.” The stems and leaves are embroidered in rayon using a simple satin stitch. Each thread and braid has a different texture to reflect the light in a different way, and their sheen creates a glowing contrast to the matt linen background.

These embroideries are inspired by the flowers Lora grows next door to her tiny garden shed studio and she confesses to being slightly obsessed with echinaceas and rudbeckias. “I’m not sure why, but I’m really interested in them, perhaps because of their simplicity.” Studying flowers in nature is an important part of Lora’s design process and she often photographs or sketches them as a visual aide-memoire. She is also inspired by historic artefacts including antique textiles and ceramics, and is particularly drawn to Poole Pottery pieces from the 1930s, relishing their bold, playful designs. Materials and colour also feed into her designs and sometimes Lora will be inspired by a particular fabric found in a market or in a forgotten corner of her overflowing studio. Her head is teeming with ideas. “I’m generally quite quick with coming up with designs, but the practicality of how I translate them into stitch is more challenging,” she says.

Lora also creates collages out of painted cut paper. Inspired by flowers, including dahlias, zinnias and heleniums, bought at her local florist, they are a gentle mix of naïve charm and careful naturalism and underline her skill in manipulating shape, colour and texture. Together with her embroideries, they reflect Lora’s interest in using inspiration from the natural world to create eye-catching yet practical objects for the home. “I love the idea of making a world of flowers in your house, and interior design is a nice way of doing that.”

USEFUL INFORMATION Stitch in Bloom by Lora Avedian is published by Hardie Grant Books (UK). Lora runs online and in-person workshops and has just launched hernew collection, An Ode to Echinacea, at Pentreath & Hall, London, which is now available on her website. Find out more at loraavedian.com