All items by Valerie's Arts and Crafts

Line, pattern and texture: paper and fabric

I’m Valerie, and I design and make pen and ink illustrative drawings and colourful quilted and embroidered wall hangings and pictures.

I love to be creative, and to experiment and explore new crafts and techniques. Inspiration comes from many sources, whether it be nature, film, something seen in the street or in a museum, or just an idea which pops into my head. It's certainly unpredictable, and sometimes keeps me awake at night, when ideas flood in and I have to get up and jot them down!

During my childhood and teenage years I enjoyed knitting, dressmaking and embroidery. In the 1960s I took design classes with Trata Drescha, a mosaicist, in which we concentrated on patterns and their variations, something that has been in evidence since we first began making things. Pattern is everywhere, and it forms a huge part of my work.

In my adult life I’ve had a knitwear stall in the Jubilee Market at Covent Garden, where I sold knitwear I’d designed and either made myself or had made by local ladies. (Incidentally, I paid my outworkers more than a certain very expensive fashion house paid theirs)! I have a long-standing passion for photography, particularly black and white portraiture. I’ve designed and made tent-stitch embroideries, and flirted with both watercolour and oil painting.

In more recent years, following the births of each of my first three grandchildren, I began making quilts for them, and then for children with long-term or life-threatening illnesses or disabilities via Love Quilts UK. This reawakened my interest in textiles and I ventured into bag making, using bought fabrics or those I’d made myself, either woven, knitted or felted. I bought a small four-shaft loom, on which I made fabric and scarves - if only I had more hours in the day to play with that! Then, following the stillbirth of my fourth grandchild, I began knitting and crocheting baby blankets for SANDS (The Neonatal and Stillborn Society).

I had by then begun drawing again, using a fineliner (Micron) pen, and developing a very detailed and intricate style, full of pattern, all with decorative borders and inspired by William Morris’s illustrations for the Kelmscott Press. The early drawings were based on my original designs for my embroideries. Sadly, my eyesight is no longer able to cope with such fine detail and I have returned to textiles and am seeking a fresh approach in working on quilted and/or embroidered wall hangings and panels. I am on a new voyage of discovery, exploring ways of incorporating paint and dye, embroidery and beading, into the textures of a quilted piece. And I am rediscovering colour! There is still so much to learn ….

A few years ago we moved from South London to Chatteris, in the Cambridgeshire Fens, a huge change in every way, and have gradually adjusted to the very different way of life here (though not to the lack of public transport)! Creativity continues ….

I hope you like what I do, and come back from time to time to see what’s new.

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