Emily makes handmade textiles from her kitchen table at Nankilly Farm, in the Ladock Valley, near Truro. Her work combines free motion embroidery with raw-edge appliqué to create fabric pots, velvet purses, cushions, lavender bags, tote bags and a growing collection of miniature dressed animals.
Emily grew up in Truro, surrounded by sewing. Her mother and grandmother were both makers, and she inherited their fabric alongside their love of it: Liberty remnants, vintage prints, scraps too beautiful to throw away. After twenty years in London working in the advertising industry, she returned to Cornwall in 2019 with her two young boys and taught herself to sew. She found free motion embroidery and it became the heart of her work. The technique lets her draw freehand with the needle, building up layered, illustrative compositions stitch by stitch. No two pieces are the same.
The animals and plants she stitches are the ones she sees around her home: hares, barn owls, ducks, foxes, wildflowers and hedgerow grasses. Each motif is built from carefully chosen fabric scraps, many of them inherited or collected over the years. She wants the things she makes to be useful, a little bit nostalgic and made to be kept and loved.
Her miniature animals began when her children asked her to make creatures they could dress up and take on imagination adventures. Each fox, badger and wolf has its own hand-embroidered expression, a unique outfit and a Liberty-fabric carry cot with pillow and duvet. No two have the same character.
Emily sells through her website, here at Cornwall Crafts, in a handful of independent retailers and at craft fairs across Cornwall.
