Join returning Aurifil guest blogger Catherine Hill (@catherine_hill_textile_artist) as she travels to the ancient Medina of Fes, Morocco, on a week-long art residency that would inspire her latest hand-embroidered piece, Moroccan Mint Tea.
Armed with an Aurifil Colour Swatch Book and her tried-and-tested 50wt thread, Catherine captured the colours of Fes as she experienced them. From the deep red of pomegranates and flags to the cool silvers of the city’s metalwork, eventually landing on eleven shades, each holding a memory of hospitality, mint tea, and unexpected friendship. Read on as Catherine walks us through how a single photograph of a traditional teapot became the starting point for a design stitched entirely from lived experience.
I’ve been working with cloth and stitch for years – and hand-embroidered text is what I am most known for. I compose narratives from lived experience and stitch embroideries to capture each letter, word and image in thread. Food and social history have always fed into my work, so when I spotted the opportunity to apply for a week-long art residency in Fes, it felt like exactly the kind of challenge I needed. I put my name forward knowing it would push me outside my comfort zone – and it did, in the best possible way. I got selected and headed out with just one other artist.
I’d already settled on Aurifil Cotton 50wt as my thread before I even left home. I’d made samples with different weights, and 50wt was the one – fine enough as a single thread for detailed motifs, and perfect doubled up for text. So, when Aurifil gifted me a Colour Swatch Book to take along, I was absolutely delighted. I packed a notepad and pen, a camera, and that precious swatch book – and let the place shape what I made.
Stepping inside the Medina for the first time felt like stepping back in time – the pace of life seemed centuries old. Built on a steep slope in the foothills of the Atlas Mountains, it descends from the iconic Blue Gate – Bab Boujloud – down to the world-famous tanneries, souks and mosques. Tucked into the alleyways were homes alongside small workshops where artisans were crafting mosaics, metalwork, embroidered garments and woven textiles – centuries of craft tradition still very much alive, unchanged and part of everyday life.
But what struck me most – and I really wasn’t prepared for this – was the colour. Mosaic-lined water fountains on street corners. Red and green Moroccan flags fluttering over market stalls piled high with aromatic fresh mint. Traders selling vibrant ceramics and leather goods everywhere you looked. Alleyways lined with woven rugs for sale. All of it beneath a clear, deep azure sky, with ochre-rendered buildings that shifted their soft tones as the light changed throughout the day.
Each day brought more pattern and texture. I visited several beautiful riads – only reached through simple wooden doors found down narrow alleyways – which open into spaces of cool calm filled with trees, birdsong, and colour. Courtyards, pillars, walls and fountains all lined with mosaics, each surface a completely different pattern laid out in tessellations and borders. And from a rooftop terrace I could see the mosque minarets, coloured in Islamic green, dotted right across the skyline.
The Aurifil Colour Swatch Book proved a valuable resource to record the colours around me. One thing I worked out quite early on was that photographing it shortly after sunrise, before the sun climbed too high, gave the most beautiful quality of light for showing the true tones of the threads. That early morning softness really brought every shade to life, mirroring the hue and tones of the very essence of colour that surrounded me.
The design for Moroccan Mint Tea – well, that came entirely from the hospitality I was shown. Hot, sweet mint tea is absolutely at the heart of Moroccan hospitality, and it was offered to me from the first hour I arrived. On that very first day our guide took us to a café next to the Blue Gate. The tea was very hot, very sweet, and poured from a great height to make it froth in the glass. I just sat there watching the world go by – traders in Djellabas, porters with handcarts, donkeys laden with panniers, a stall of bright red pomegranates being freshly pressed right opposite us – and I knew straight away that this was where the work would begin.
It was the same throughout my stay – every single invitation started with mint tea. It’s sometimes called Moroccan whisky, and once you’ve seen it poured into a glass from a great height, you’ll understand exactly why – it looks just like amber whisky. Towards the end of the week, I was invited to a new friend’s home in the Andalusian quarter – a friendship that had grown during the residency and that I genuinely hadn’t expected. Her home was beautiful: an open courtyard, large cedar doors, every surface covered in mosaics. We sat and talked for ages about our shared love of textiles – the making of things, the handling of cloth, what it means to create by hand. She poured mint tea from a traditional Berrad, and before I left, I took a photograph of that metal teapot. That photograph became the starting point for the whole design.
Choosing the colours was one of the most enjoyable parts of the whole project – because every single one came directly from something I’d seen or experienced. From the deep Red (2250) of flags and pomegranates to the cool silvers of Mist (2606), Aluminium (2615) and Stainless Steel (2620) that echo the metalwork you see everywhere. Light Beige (2310) and Yellow (2135) for the ochre walls, Light Toast (2930) for the warmth of the tea itself. Shamrock Green (6737) for the brightness of fresh mint, Green Yellow (2884) for the Islamic green of the mosques, and Delft Blue (2730) and Light Wedgewood (2725) for the blue of that Moroccan sky. Eleven colours in total – each one carries with it a moment and memory of Fes.
The embroidery took several months to design and around two weeks to stitch. Back home I worked from my notes and drawings, from photographs taken throughout the week, and from that same Aurifil Colour Swatch Book I’d carried with me in Fes.
Working on a tapestry frame, I started with the words – a double thread of Red (2250) for the central panel and borders. Then came the motif in single strands, followed by tiny stitches of detail and accent, each one a single thread of Aurifil worked over just one thread of the base cloth. It’s those little dots of colour that really create the depth in the motif. I carried the colour accents through into the inner border of seed stitch that frames the whole piece, finishing with a top stitched edge in Light Beige (2310).
Looking back, choosing colours from lived experience made all the difference – each one adding an extra layer of detail and richness to both the story and the stitching. Aurifil Cotton 50wt gave me everything I needed in a single weight – fine enough for intricate motifs in a single strand, and versatile enough doubled for text and borders. Each of my eleven colours carries a memory – a story of a week spent somewhere completely unfamiliar, its people, their generous hospitality, and many glasses of mint tea shared along the way.
Aurifil Cotton 50wt thread numbers and colours used in Moroccan Mint Tea:
2250 Red | 2606 Mist | 2615 Aluminium | 2620 Stainless Steel | 2310 Light Beige | 2930 Light Toast | 2135 Yellow | 2884 Green Yellow | 6737 Shamrock Green | 2730 Deft Blue | 2725 Light Wedgewood
Stitches: Hand-embroidered seed stitch, couching, and backstitch.
You can find Catherine on Instagram as @catherine_hill_textile_artist