Health, Beauty and Lifestyle with Denise McNamara

Tuam-based artist Kathy Ross first taught people how to customise their own tote bags during Culture Night a few years back when she found an extraordinary enthusiasm for the project.

The only problem was the time slot was too short to share the techniques she wanted her inexperienced students to adopt – fabric applique, fabric painting and hand embroidery.

So when she spotted an open call to host workshops for the 2024 Irish Design Week, she decided to apply, getting funding to hold three classes in Tuam Library lasting 2.5 hours each. Within a few hours all but two of them had completely booked out.

“The tote workshops went really, really well. It was lovely to see all the tote bags around Tuam afterwards with all the different techniques.”

Fabric applique is when your cut pieces of fabric to create a collage. She then shows wannabe design artists how to hand embroider over the applique to create a design with bit of painting overlain to give a truly unique shopping bag.

For this year’s Culture Night, Kathy led 80 people in the library learning how to make their own prints. She’s well used to leading complete beginners as well as old design hands in creative workshops to produce some form of art.

She’s versed in many different types of art as she doesn’t like to be boxed into any one category, as she explains.

A native of Doughishka outside Galway City, Kathy studied printmaking at the National College of Art and Design but on graduation spent the next few years as a watercolourist before concentrating on textiles or fabric art. Some years ago, she returned to her printmaking roots and her last collection is inspired by the nature she often spots around her house and studio at Togher, near Abbeyknockmoy. She moved there with her husband and two kids after living in Lackagh for ten years.

Pictured: Artist Kathy Ross with one of the patches she has made for a bomber jacket. Inset: An example of the designs recreated on one tote bag at a recent workshop.