Gina Barrett
Gina is probably best known for her textile buttons - making both historical reproductions and reconstructions for film and TV, and designing new and different buttons incorporating traditional skills and techniques. She has also written numerous button making books. Examples of specialist can be found on her bespoke portfolio page - www.gina-b.co.uk
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About
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, Chicago Museum of Art, The Victoria & Albert Museum, English Heritage and Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.
She has provided buttons, ribbons and braid for an award-winning project at Perth Museum, and hundreds of buttons for the films "Napoleon" & “Sweeney Todd”. She has created buttons & trimmings for various series including “The Crown”, “Becoming Elizabeth” , “A Stitch in Time” as well as a few films yet to be released!
As an avid collector of antique & vintage textile buttons, Gina continues to research and to write about both old techniques and newly developed ones.
Her books include : Buttons, A Passementerie Workshop Manual, Dorset Ring Buttons, Thread Wrapped Buttons, Zwirnknopf Buttons, Tak V Bowes Departed, Fabric Buttons (20 to Make)
She has undertaken two “One Button a Day” challenges to date (2016 & 2020) - making and sharing across social media a new handmade button every day. (onebuttonaday.co.uk)
Gina & her husband Mark run Gina-B Silkworks, which designs & produces a variety of craft kits, books, DVDs & other items with an emphasis on hand textiles and passementerie (textile trimmings). The aim is to encourage and promote many of these almost lost arts, such as button and tassel making, braids, lace making, embroidery, narrow weaving, and other associated crafts.
Mini craft gallery
