About

Embroidery

After completing my art foundation course I worked with mixed media for around six years, creating works on paper and fabric using painting, printing and stitch. I then began to focus on hand embroidery, and have now worked in this way for the last five years.

I love the possibilities of embroidery and the range of marks and textures that can be built up with stitch. My patterns tend to utilise back stitch or stem stitch to 'draw' outlines, before using straight stitches of varying lengths to fill in space and add areas of pattern. I am very inspired by Kantha embroidery, building up areas of colour using small straight/ seed stitches.

I love to create patterns featuring birds; their colours and patterns lend themselves so well to being translated into stitch, I really enjoy working out ways to turn certain details into areas of pattern (such as feather shapes on their wings) and working out how to stylise and simplify certain areas.

Drawing is an important part of my process, and before starting a new pattern I make preparatory drawings which I then use to create the final pattern drawing. In the past each pattern drawing was meticulously created by hand. This could be a challenge at times, as I'd inevitably wobble in the middle of a line that was meant to be straight! I create my final pattern drawings now using vector software; still meticulous work but rather more forgiving!

I really love encouraging and supporting others on their embroidery journeys and I am so touched when people tell me about or send photos of their finished projects created using my patterns.

Felt

I also love to work with felt. I have created many individual decorations, custom orders (including a set of decorations for artist Clive Hicks- Jenkins inspired by his illustrations for a retelling of Hansel and Gretel, by poet laureate Simon Armitage) as well as larger, framed pieces. Pop over to my felt page for more information and images.

Editorial

I have extensive experience in creating both embroidery and felt decoration patterns and articles for magazines and love to work on projects like this, if you would like me to contribute a project or article to your publication, be it a magazine or book, please contact me.