Interview: Jilli Blackwood, designer and artist

“I had the opportunity to meet her and she spotted what I was doing in a tiny 20cm sample. I had discovered this technique, now called ‘slash and show’, and she said, ‘I’d like to see that in a bigger piece of fabric.’ So I went away and did 3m lengths of it, hand-dying, layering, machining, hand-sewing tiny stitches and digging at the surface. As soon as I had done that, I realised I could wrap this round the body. She opened my eyes to what I was doing.”

So impressed was Muir that she offered Blackwood, who specialised in embroidery and woven textiles, work experience upon graduation. “I turned her down and I still think about it to this day, but if I had gone to work for her I would have been a different Jilli Blackwood sitting here now.”

Does she regret it? “Yes and no. Yes, because when I see students today struggling for placements and there was I ... But I had such a burning desire to remain in Scotland, because this is where I was gleaning all my inspiration and knowledge from, and the entrepreneurship was so strong here,” she says.

So strong did the entrepreneurial spirit burn in Blackwood that she decided to pursue her own course, breaking down the barrier between art and fashion – using silk, crêpe, wool, leather and embroidery techniques to build layers of texture in fabrics that became sought-after by couturiers. “Originally I was working for high-end fashion designers, but I landed a commission for a wall-hanging and this set me on a different path, creating public art from large-scale embroideries.”

Today Blackwood’s trademark slash and show artworks and ‘art to wear’ hang in museums, corporate headquarters and public buildings, including St Andrews House, in Edinburgh, where her vibrant ‘Sizzle’ wall-hanging livens up the Scottish Government headquarters. Her ‘Tilda’ kilt gives the National Museum of Scotland a swing, and her clothes are also being worn by some of Scotland’s more avant garde fashionistas.

Brought up in Glasgow and now with three children of her own, Blackwood is a blend of her parents’ talents and skills. From her fruit-importer father, she picked up how to run a business, the gift of the gab and to never give up, while her mother’s artistic talents opened her eyes to the beauty of the world. Even their home in Glasgow played its part, with ornate tiles and mosaics making an early impression. “We had amazing carpets on the floor, and our house was full of mosaic tiles because the man who built it worked for the city council and he commissioned the Italian artisans who did the City Chambers to do his home too.

“As a child, you don’t realise how beautiful it is but I think that had a huge impact on me and my subconscious. I held it in my mind’s eye, then added something of my own from my imagination,” she says.

School sewing lessons were also an influence, in particular the frustration of having to turn down the hem of a polka-dot dress. “Now my edges are all exposed, and the most important part of my work. It’s the ten-year-old child in me rebelling,” she says.

“I’m very much a maximalist – I want to create warmth with colour and texture. Think of light coming into a room, transforming it. I want to do that every day with Scottish textiles.”

Blackwood would love to collaborate with a Scottish manufacturer such as Alex Begg & Co or Johnstons of Elgin to increase her market beyond the bespoke and reach out to foreign markets. Another dreams is to do what Stella McCartney did for the British Olympic team and dress Scottish athletes for the Commonwealth Games. “I want them to feel stronger, greater, faster through my clothes, and my digital printed designs would work well for that. It’s a dream, but if you don’t dream, you don’t do anything.”