gina-b silkworks
Grantham
Gina-B Silkworks designs and produces a variety of craft kits, books, DVDs and
other items with an emphasis on handwork & passementerie - decorative textile
crafts. We also stock a range of tools & materials for these crafts. Gina also
makes bespoke items to commission.
"Traditional Crafts for the modern maker"
About Gina -
Gina Barrett has been making reconstructions of buttons, dress trimmings and
other passementerie for museums and costumiers since 1999. Her work can be seen
in a variety of museums, heritage sites & stately homes including the Royal
Mews, the Royal Armouries, Historic Royal Palaces, The Victoria & Albert Museum,
English Heritage, Chicago Museum of Art and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
She provided buttons, ribbons and braid for an award-winning project at Perth
Museum, and hundreds of buttons for the film “Sweeney Todd”. Her latest film
work includes buttons for "Napoleon" and "Lee". She has created buttons &
trimmings for various series including “The Crown”, “Becoming Elizabeth” , “A
Stitch in Time”.
She is the author of a number of books including Buttons, A Passementerie
Workshop Manual, Dorset Ring Buttons, Thread Wrapped Buttons, Zwirnknopf Buttons
and the Making Passementerie range of instructional DVDs. She appears on the
Create & Craft channel with demonstrations of passementerie techniques,
representing her company Gina-B Silkworks. Gina is the contributor for the
Passementerie entry in the Encyclopaedia of Medieval Dress and Textiles of the
British Isles c. 450-1450 (Brill). She has also co-authored Tak V Bowes
Departed: A 15th Century Braiding Manual Examined and 6 booklets on medieval
narrow wares, and regularly produces how-to articles for magazines, as well as
papers and essays on other forms of passementerie.
Gina has been involved in textile research projects with groups around the
world, and is a founder member of Soper Lane, a group begun in 1999 to research
the lives and work of the medieval London silkwomen.
Gina is a trained illustrator, with a background in historical and diagram
illustration and graphic design. Her passion for textiles grew from studying
historical costume for her illustrative work.
