Book excerpt: At its very essence, textile art is about mark-making. As an artist would use a pencil, an embroiderer or quilter can use stitch to make marks on fabric – a fundamental creative act. The making of marks often starts and underpins the entire design process, and a textile artwork is usually made up of repeated stitched marks. This fascinating book shows how marks can be used in textile work, both simple and complex, and explores the crossover between stitch and drawing. Author Helen Parrott is well known for her strongly graphic textile art, which uses marks to stunning visual effect. The book is divided into the types of marks that can be made on fabric, varying in complexity, arrangement and 'feel' – single, grouped, massed, regular, irregular, calligraphic, permanent, transient, and so on. It covers both hand and machine stitch, which make very different types of mark and between them offer limitless potential for mark-making, used both separately and together. It aims to help you take inspiration from the world around you to create marks, develop your own mark-making skills and strengthen your personal creative voice, and is an essential book for any textile artist.