About me: I'm a designer, maker, creative soul, living and working by the sea in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales, UK. Starting many years ago as a fashion designer & textile artist my journey eventually took me into the world of graphic design and digital story telling so I have a diverse set of design skills and knowledge. I believe that my work is all about connections, connecting threads, threads of ideas, threads of inspiration, threads of yarn...pulling a thread of an idea into shape to make or produce something unique.
Within recent years I have discovered the joy of making cloth. Taking raw natural materials like wool or linen, nettle or hemp and spinning these fibres into yarn to knit or weave them into fabric. Using age old techniques to prepare natural fibres, hand spinning yarns, winding skeins, warping threads, hand weaving, drafting a garment, making a toile, slow stitching or machine stitching cloth are all such connective hands on processes. Processes that need a completely different approach to how I think or work using a software package. It gives me the chance to step away form the fast pace of our virtual world and from designing only using a screen, it allows me to connect with what I am making.
So I enjoy the switch from working on high tech to slow tech from being wired to being un-wired, no digital circuits or clever algorithms... to just the wood and string of a weaving loom! Actual inks and dyes replace the vast hex colour codes of a digital colour palette. This unique mix of the old and new pushes me to be more experimental, to learn and explore anything and everything! On a daily basis I am learning new and exciting things.
I love that handmade is special and doesn't have to be completely perfect, it should be well made, but by its very nature it will sometimes come with irregularities, a mistake or two, a flaw, a natural unevenness, a textural clothiness or something that just adds authenticity.
It is rewarding to feel the fibres, the cloth, the ink the paint whatever it is I am working on to feel that tired, rewarding feeling I have ink on my hands or snippets of sewing threads clinging to me and I have made something unique.
Qualifications:
BA (Hons) Degree - Design Futures - University of South Wales
Fashion and Textile Design - Newport School of Art & Design
Background: My Story
Within recent years I have discovered the joy of making cloth. Taking raw natural materials like wool or linen, nettle or hemp and spinning these fibres into yarn to knit or weave them into fabric. Using age old techniques to prepare natural fibres, hand spinning yarns, winding skeins, warping threads, hand weaving, drafting a garment, making a toile, slow stitching or machine stitching cloth are all such connective hands on processes. Processes that need a completely different approach to how I think or work using a software package. It gives me the chance to step away form the fast pace of our virtual world and from designing only using a screen, it allows me to connect with what I am making.
So I enjoy the switch from working on high tech to slow tech from being wired to being un-wired, no digital circuits or clever algorithms... to just the wood and string of a weaving loom! Actual inks and dyes replace the vast hex colour codes of a digital colour palette. This unique mix of the old and new pushes me to be more experimental, to learn and explore anything and everything! On a daily basis I am learning new and exciting things.
I love that handmade is special and doesn't have to be completely perfect, it should be well made, but by its very nature it will sometimes come with irregularities, a mistake or two, a flaw, a natural unevenness, a textural clothiness or something that just adds authenticity.
It is rewarding to feel the fibres, the cloth, the ink the paint whatever it is I am working on to feel that tired, rewarding feeling I have ink on my hands or snippets of sewing threads clinging to me and I have made something unique.
Qualifications:
BA (Hons) Degree - Design Futures - University of South Wales
Fashion and Textile Design - Newport School of Art & Design
Background: My Story
- My journey has given me a wide range of design experience, starting as a junior fashion & textile designer for large clothing manufacturers that were once found here in South Wales. I learnt my trade from designing womenswear and children's clothing, pattern cutting, sample making and being involved with all aspects of large scale manufacturing production for clients in the UK and USA.
- In-house Graphic & Business Information Designer. International Companies.
- Freelance Designer.
