Recently I spent a day at Aurifil HQ in Milan, invited by the very lovely Brad Mitchell who is the UK sales manager and, as it turns out, grew up just down the road from me in West Yorkshire. During my day in Saronno I learnt about the history of the company, saw the production process at the factory and planned my first collaboration with them at the Craft, Hobby and Stitch show in the UK next February (yippee). I love Aurifil thread like so many other people out there and bought my first batch from Lisa and Justine at Simply Solids who have a really good supply here in England. I not only use it for quilting but also...
I recently featured in an article in my regional newspaper The Yorkshire Post, partly because of a celebrity commission I made for US actress Kristin Davis. For those of you who don't live up here in the beautiful North, here is the story. Last summer I was quite new to Twitter and overexcited at the thought of following interesting people who I admire and enjoy hearing about. Sex and the City is my favourite TV series of all time. I watched it with my lovely friend Johanna at University and later with my husband Paul. I loved the characters, New York and the costumes by Pat Field. I still watch it now, and I am instantly happy and want to...
Many of the pictures that I create show animals fast asleep in their bed, snuggled beneath a cosy quilt. The original inspiration was a nursery rhyme I sang to all of my 3 children at many of the local playgroups I used to go to. The words tell the story of a bunny who lays down and goes to sleep (the children all copied this and were deadly still) and then wakes up and hops around (they all then jumped wildly around the room). It was basically everybody's favourite and was very sweet to watch, and I sang it hundreds of times so it is ingrained in my mind. About 4 years ago I made some quick sketches of sleeping bunnies. I...
