Page 49 - The Digital Cloth issue 2

I spend most of my days in my little
studio, a tiny box room in our home in
a small village in rural Buckinghamshire.
I like working from home. It has
enabled me to enjoy the best of both
worlds… bringing up a family and
still following my passion for
embroidery. I work at my machine for 4
or five hours each day listening to news,

sport and politics on the radio for
company. We are all fortunate these days
to be able to easily promote our work to a
much wider audience without ever
leaving the house, through social media.
I love the exchange of views and feedback
from fellow textile artists from across the
globe, something that artists of previous
generations would never have had.

comes for holidays, we are usually off to explore the Over the years I’ve exhibited all over the
beautiful coastline of the British Isles. UK, as part of prestigious textile groups
Some of our favourite destinations include North and in my own right. I’m a proud
Devon, Pembrokeshire and the Jurassic coast. However, member of the Buckinghamshire
my particular favourite is Norfolk. The North Norfolk Craft Guild where I exhibit and regularly
coast has a character all of its own. Its vast flat sandy demonstrate my work. I am fortunate

beaches, the salt marshes and creeks, the gentle rolling to have found a handful of galleries that
countryside, the huge panoramic skies all give Norfolk regularly exhibit my work and keep me,
a very particular character, which I love and skies have and my lovely old Bernina, very busy and
become one of my favourite subjects. I try to capture a very happy.
snapshot in time, describing the energy and
movement of unseen forces. I also love the long, deep
winding creeks in the marshes, hiding little boats whose
tall masts seem to mark their positions like pins in a

map. Sometimes the little vessels are stranded and
abandoned only to be taken back into the marshes
gradually by nature; a process, which over time creates
structural sculptures of decaying wood in the landscape.
The fading colours of the once brightly painted boats
blend back into the marshes with the patina of time and
tide imprinted upon them.
I work on a Bernina 801, a gift from my Grandmother
when I was about 15, which has worked at least as hard
as I have over the years and is feeling her age now. It’s
probably time to start thinking about replacing her but
she feels like an extension of me and we have such an

understanding that I am loathed to move on.