lyndawilcansew

Vendor Biography

Sew… where did it all start for me?

Well, as a child I was always drawing and making things like pom-pom toys and dioramas from shoe boxes. My love of art and crafting continued through school, where I did some very basic sewing, taking me on to art college. After a detour through the work world of fashion manufacturing, marriage, parenthood and relocating from London to Malvern, one day I found a beautiful fabric blind in my sister’s garage. I picked it up, cut into it and proceeded to make a string of hanging hearts. And then…I just knew what to do. It was a very odd feeling, realizing that my hands just knew how to work with the fabric, and all of a sudden my ideas came pouring out. I’d come to believe that painting and drawing was my ‘thing’, but it actually turned out to be hand sewing and making.

My main market is Christmas tree decorations. I love designing and making items which I hope can become heirloom pieces to be brought out and treasured for many years. I make one of everything I design for myself and each of my children, in the hope that I can bring a little bit of childlike wonder and magic to their Christmases even when they are grownups with families of their own.

Where I get my inspiration from? Well, it’s mainly 4 things…the natural world (I was a bit of a tomboy as a youngster, always out and about looking for butterflies and birds’ nests), Scandi folk art (I like the repetition, order and bright colours), Kawaii (in Japanese popular culture, appealing in a cute or endearing way) and also from one of my favourite childhood pastimes, playing with Fuzzy Felt. I love the feeling of felt, plus it’s a very forgiving fabric to work with! I sew everything by hand – which is a dying art, sadly – apart from bunting which I machine. I’m from Sunderland in North East England, and when I was young, it was very common for people to collect and display lots of small figurines or statuettes of people and animals, so I think that has had an influence on me too.

So, there’s quite a variety here, and I like to think it’s given me a creative identity which leans towards the cute and almost cartoon-like for my year-round makes, and more Scandi and naturalistic for Christmas. I just let my creations develop as they to want to. Sometimes they spring to life fully-formed and exactly as I’d hoped, like my hare, and sometimes it takes longer.

Alongside my day job, I have practiced and learned new skills and have previously supplied a couple of lovely local shops. I have years’ worth of ideas and back-catalogue designs to work through, and my biggest challenge at the moment is finding the time to create and share everything I’d like to. I hope you enjoy my work as much as I do.

Oh, and why lyndawilcansew? Well, it is simply that my surname is Wilkinson, and my husband said ‘Yes, you can sew a bit, can’t you!’ and came up with the name. Lynda x