Sewing has been a passion all my life. I absolutely love fabric; I love handling it, cutting it and piecing it back together to create something from nothing.

I started as a dressmaker at a very young age and immediately fell in love with the act of stitching fabric. I was curious and felt excited every time I had a new piece of cloth to work with. I couldn’t wait to experiment and see what would happen.

Learning about fashion design and drafting patterns felt like the natural progression in my development. I was taught about tailoring by my tailor uncle who was invaluable. I also worked for several years as a sewing machinist in clothing factories. Through traditional sewing and working in an industrial environment I was fortunate to experience sewing clothes from different perspectives.

The next step for me was doing a City & Guild in Patchwork and Quilting which broadened my range of sewing techniques. Thanks to this course I realized I was not limited to just making clothes but I could use my skills in a more artistic way and this opened up a whole variety of new options for me.

As a textile creative I would spend a long time looking for the right fabric in the right pattern and colour. At times not being able to find just the right fabric was frustrating. This was the catalyst to ask myself ‘what if’ I could design my own fabric. I signed up to a few courses in Photoshop and Illustrator and before I knew it I was printing fabrics with my own designs. Getting to play with colour in this way has been a game changer and a whole new outlet for my creativity.

I am happiest when I am being creative whether it is making clothes, altering or customizing them, working with stitched textiles or designing new patterns for fabric or surface.