LILLY FRANCES BEARDS

Lilly is a fibre artist based at Islington Mill, Salford with textile collective Thread Ends Studio.

Working primarily in woven textile, her practice utilises industry-waste yarns, bold colour, and the structural logic of the loom to explore identity, technology, narrative, and feeling.

Her work moves between the geological and the personal, the algorithmic and the handmade. A recurring thread is autistic identity: the experience of masking, unmasking, and carving out space for neurodivergent people in the often overwhelming worlds of art and design.

Lilly is a 2023 graduate of Manchester School of Art and has previously written for TEXTILE: The Journal of Cloth and Culture.

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strange orbits (2026)
cotton, madder, logwood, safflower

strange orbits, detail (2026)
cotton, madder, logwood, safflower

handwoven from industry-waste yarns painted with natural dyes, strange orbits uses our planet’s colour palette to map the volcanic surface of Jupiter’s moon Io. hand-stitched glitches and artefacts trail the edges of the cloth, tracing the technologies through which we reach towards these distant worlds and bring them, somehow, home.

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liberate (2023)
cotton warp with various waste yarns

unmask, decrypt [swatches] (2023)
jacquard + dobby woven cotton

unmask, decrypt [wraps] (2023)
cardstock, cotton

an exploration of autistic masking and neurodivergent existence in the digital sphere. autoethnographic research; semi-autobiographical in nature, drawing from personal experiences and emotions, whilst also providing a platform for a wide array of diverse research and representation. manifesting as a series of woven art textiles and a 72-page collation of research, prose, and imagery.

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unravel / fabricate ideation (2022)
digital collage, ink drawings

unravel (2022)
cotton jacquard

unravel / fabricate is a curation of jacquard, film, and risograph print work exploring connections between trauma and circular making processes. all fiber waste from this project was re-spun into new yarn to use in other projects.

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glitched (2023/25)
cotton, stretched onto wood frame

glitch sample book (2023)
cotton, mohair, alpaca, silk

a combination of research and woven textile exploring the relationship between identity and digital technology. researched from a neurodivergent lens, looking at 'glitched' identity as explored in cyberfeminist theory. research concepts feed into practical explorations in woven cloth, attempting to create glitches within a double cloth warp.

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justice for the weavers of milk street (2022)
inkjet print, wheat paste

justice - on the loom (2022)
lambswool jacquard

justice for the weavers of milk street (2022)
inkjet prints, lambswool jacquard

a project researching and raising awareness about the old weavers’ cottages of Manchester's Northern Quarter. in 2021, several of these cottages on Kelvin Street (previously Milk Street) were approved for demolition and redevelopment into an apartment complex. following a period of historic map and census-led research, i created a list of the historic weavers of Milk Street and pasted posters of their names on the demolition site. by naming them, we provide relatable and accessible history to bring these disregarded, yet culturally vital, buildings to life. if you erase working class history, you take away the heart and soul of what made a city what it is today.

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loom diary

on the loom, may 2026
cotton, madder, logwood, safflower

on the loom, november 2025
cotton

on the loom, july 2025
cotton, linen