Why do you sew clothes by hand? Because this is the traditional French way of sewing hand crafted clothes; I am half French. Hand work gives a softer finish than machine sewing, it is particularly suited to sewing fine fabrics such as silk because the hands “feel” the fabric and thereby control the “tension” of the sewing. Hand sewing lends itself well to accurate interpretation of intricate shaping. There is only a minimal risk of hand sewn stitches damaging delicate, expensive fabrics. And. It gives a traditional couture finish.

BIAS CUTTING

What is bias cutting? Bias cut clothes are cut across the diagonal of the weave of the fabric, rather than on the straight grain of the weave. Bias cutting creates soft, fluid, drapey clothes. Cutting garments on the straight grain produces a more structured look.

UNIQUE DESIGNS - WORKS OF IMAGINATION

Are the designs unique? Yes; each design is created individually as an original work of imagination. Do you sell ready-to-wear (prêt-à-porter) clothes? Although most clothes are made to order, I do have some off-the-peg clothes for sale - see silk dresses I hope to expand this to include a range of small editions of clothes as well as one-off creations.

Why don’t you make trousers? Basically because I am a dress designer, not a tailor. I have a natural instinct for cutting patterns for dresses; I am hopeless at cutting patterns for trousers; I only work from my own patterns because I trade as a Designer/Dressmaker and artist.

VISUAL ART

Why are you a visual artist as well as a dress designer? Because drawing was my first love. I started designing clothes professionally for other people because other people said they liked the clothes I designed for myself. I was brought up from a very early age to sew my own clothes, as were my three sisters, and I started designing my own patterns when I was very young because I could not find ready made paper patterns for the clothes I wanted to wear. I have created and sold pictures and particularly my cards in conjunction with designing dresses throughout my career.

HAND MADE

If you place so much emphasis on hand produced products, why do you draw with computers as well as by hand? When I first started working, computers could not yet draw (well not properly anyway) so all the studios I worked in produced artwork by hand, even in the drawing office at NCR. The only exception to this was the text, which was typed on separate sheets of paper, although some publications also used calligraphy (hand written text). The paper that the text was printed, or written on was then cut manually into a shape that would fit into the hand prepared artwork. The paper was stuck with special glue that enabled the paper to be moved around on the main artwork until it was in the right position. The excess glue could be removed from the paper without damaging the artwork. When computers mastered the art of page layout, they continued to use the terms “cut and paste” which originated from the hand work that “paste-up artists” used to do.

From the late 1980s I used an electronic typewriter for my correspondence, but I would not have a computer because it did not really fit with my ethos of keeping hand sewing alive, producing frocks and gowns, and also producing hand made pictures.

DIGITAL ART

However, by the mid 1990s, I succumbed, and when I eventually discovered how easily I could draw with a mouse, and realised that digital techniques could really expand my artistic horizons, my sojourn into digital art was born and I started to produce my collection of digital art.

GICLÉE PRINTS

What are giclée prints? They are prints produced using specialist ink jet printers, created for printing high quality prints of photographs, graphics or fine art onto various media, .e.g. quality photo paper, fine art paper, canvas. The inks are very durable and the vibrancy of the colours should last for at least 75 years, or longer, depending on the substrate they are printed onto. These are archival quality prints which are fast becoming the normal format for 21st century Limited and Open Edition prints, that will last for generations

FINE ART PAPERS

The fine art papers that my giclée prints are printed on are sometimes made from cotton rag, which does not “yellow” with age, but which have a natural ivory colour rather than bright white, or sometimes from wood free pulp, which means that the lignin (which makes wood based paper go “yellow” with age) has been removed and the cellulose buffered, often with calcium carbonate and they are all what are commonly known as *acid free* papers, which means they have a high ph value which helps to stop the paper yellowing with age (whatever the substrate) and it helps to give the papers an archival quality. I use professional print services for these editions, who produce their work to Fine Art Trade Guild standards. A Certificate of Authenticity is usually provided with each print to authenticate the quality of the paper and the high quality print standards that are used to produce the print.

COMMISSIONS

Do you only undertake private commissions? Although a lot of my commissions are for private clients, I also undertake commissions for the commercial sector, and will consider requests for Trade Orders for Note Cards, Fine Art Cards, Pictures, Prints, Scarves, evening bags and hand made dresses

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