Within a week of seeing her consultant major surgery resulted in her colon being removed and a stoma bag fitted. “I really cannot not put into words what I felt inside but life went on with my beautiful family. Yet again I had to leave work leaving me broken again.” To try to cheer her up, I bought a sewing machine and noticed and ordered the extra extra fittings you use with the machine. This included a freestyle embroidery shoe and the rest is history!!!. Nicola taught herself how to free motion stitch embroider and won a Newcomer award from a Lancashire prestigious Arts and Craft group for her free stitch applique collection. Since then she has been featured in a number of Newspapers and specialist publications and continues to achieve interest from publishers both here and abroad.
Through all her physical setbacks she still loved to draw and a idea came to mind!!! Why not have some of her work digitalized and people could use her work in what ever way they wanted on whatever fabric or garment they chose? So, off we went and to date we have customers in nine different countries expanding all the time. Our website and Nicola’s work, we hope, is unlike anyone else you have seen, as Nicola hand draws all her images before they are digitalized. With a liking for dark side such as the likes of embroideries with Alice in Wonderland and Red Riding Hood, these characters give her ideas that are ‘popping out’ all of the time.
We, as embroiderers with a very British style, believe that teddy bears and cute designs are fine, but there are different edges to be explored where emotion and style are combined in combination with an eclectic approach. Our journey continues apace and our desire and passion has never been stronger and so this is just a taste of how Picturestitch was born!!.
Thank you, Nicola & Andrew Elliott xx
