Collection: Vanessa Garland : Textiles : Newport

Beginning with embroidery in childhood, my personal path of creating, repurposing and transforming has been a constant ever since. I was fortunate as a child to have the seeds of an embroidery passion sewn by a skilled and patient Nan and this began an appreciation for this old craft. Having undertaken a course at London Met in upholstery. In recent years I have leaned more into traditional upholstery methods, with an emphasis on recovering chairs with vintage and welsh textiles. Yet, the thread of embroidery has followed me and resulted in an exploration of embellishing chairs with beautiful stitches influenced by vintage patterns.  My ethical, planet conscious, recycling principles have also been important in my processes. I feel I must reuse wherever possible and utilize natural or environmentally sound materials

I find the tradition of embroidery folk dolls fascinating…Traditionally home-made from (and stuffed with) spare scraps of material, they are one of the oldest children's toys in existence. My dolls have been born out of naive, handmade folk dolls of the last century with their own highly individual embroidery. My dolls are hand embroidered in tapestry wool and vintage embroidery thread…some have appliqué in vintage textiles too.