I am an applied artist, designer-maker, craftswoman, whatever you choose to call me – I stitch stuff by hand. I work primarily with fabrics, but also with vitreous enamel with copper and, most recently, paper and silk collages that combine drawing, stitching and print.
I work mainly to commission for textile companies, publishers, and private clients. I also run specialist drawing workshops that reflect my dual passion for garden plants and fabric. My textile business is called Heart Space Studios. To sustain a long career designing and making textiles, I create groups of stitched works exploring new ideas, materials and techniques. These pieces form my personal research and are the foundation of my practice.
Recently I have exhibited these works in solo exhibitions, in 2024 at the Welsh Quilt Centre and in 2025 at the National Trust Garden at Hidcote. I sell customised giclée prints of my stitched works and the books I publishe to accompany these shows on line. I also write a long standing blog that documents in detail the many different aspects of both how and why I make my works.
I studied Fashion and Textile at Liverpool Art College in the late 1960’s, and started to exhibit embroideries in the 1970’s while working in London as a frustrated fast-track fashion designer. I called my early embroideries “my antidote to fashion“. I became an Associate Senior Lecturer in Textiles, and later as an Associate Research Fellow at Bristol U.W.E. I initiated a research group for applied arts staff within the Design faculty. Together we shared skills, ideas and imagery within a varied experimental environment.
My works always somehow stay true to my chosen discipline of hand-stitched textiles; during my career I have studied traditional kimono textiles in Japan (with an R.S.A. Travel Scholarship) that refined and extended my whole textile practice, leading to major exhibitions in several international galleries. With an Arts Council England award, I developed my textile designs to construct vitreous enamel sculptures or The Enamel Garden – which, perhaps inevitably, metamorphosed into enamel patchwork. My fascination of working with disparate materials still endures….
