Many of my fabric designs are very personal. It took me a long time to become a designer (I didn’t go to art college until I was in my thirties!) Ideas and images bubble up from my memories and my designs often include things that are important to me. For example, ‘Cornish sandcastles’ evokes the many beach holidays we spent in Cornwall, on the South-West coast of England, when our children were small. My husband is Cornish and there is a beautiful long beach near to his home village where we made many sandcastles over the years. There are striped windbreaks pictured, mind, because in Britain it can be breezy on the coast, too!
Just along the coast is the Eddystone lighthouse. Lighthouses have a real fascination for me – out there on the very edge of the land. I included the Eddystone (and several more real lighthouses) in this ‘Lighthouse windows’ design.
Nearer to home (I now live in the North-East), I painted ‘The Farne Islands’ which is a small group of islands of the Northumberland coast. You can go out to visit them on a small boat like the ones depicted in the design. I did this trip in the summer this year and saw both puffins and seals.
We also saw a small group of dolphins, including a youngster. Their fins cut the surface of the waves in a most beautiful curved rotation like the workings of a clock. I have a dolphin mother and baby in my collection too.
You can find all my fabrics in the online studio here.
In the same way, many of the quilt patterns I design and write have their origins in a special event or celebration. The ‘One Hundred Quilt’ was made for my uncle’s one hundredth birthday – there are exactly one hundred pieces in the quilt top.
‘Compass and Stars’ was made for a couple who were both celebrating their 60th birthdays. They like to travel and are interested in astronomy, so the quilt emerged full of stars with a quilted compass at the centre.
This baby quilt was made for my daughter’s friend’s first baby. I was thinking of the nursery rhyme ‘Oranges and lemons go the bells of St Clements’ and the colours chose themselves!
If you are reading this after November 2018, you can find my patterns here.
I look forward to hearing from you! Amanda
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