hi

I’m Kelly Fletcher, an embroidery artist and author. I work from home in Cape Town, South Africa, where I live with my husband. And you’ll usually find me listening to podcasts or with the tennis on while stitching.

I fell in love with embroidery in my mid-20s and began designing early on, when I couldn’t find patterns for the things I wanted to embroider. I like fresh, modern designs stitched in beautiful colours. And I find the detail you can get with hand embroidery hugely appealing, things like insect feet or recreating a Fair Isle knitting pattern in embroidery stitches. I enjoy figuring out how to use different stitches to build up a design, rather than sticking with one or two and simply stitching over an outline.

I also like embroidering more unusual things, like insects and jellyfish, keys and alphabets, books and snails.

I soon realised – when blogs were just starting to become a thing – that there were others like me out there and online. Embroiderers who appreciated the stitches and techniques in traditional embroidery but wanted to stitch more modern designs in fresh colours. And so I combined the skills I’d picked up working in media and publishing with my love for hand embroidery to turn my designs into patterns and make them available online for anyone, anywhere in the world to stitch.

Then, I was simply offering other modern embroiderers designs that they felt excited to stitch. Now, my aim is not only to come up with fresh and original designs but also to make it as interesting and easy as possible for you to enjoy doing embroidery too.

“So many stitches are beautiful and interesting to work that the embroideress who is prepared to abandon the unimaginative use of stem, chain, satin and petit point will soon find how richly she is rewarded.” – Barbara Snook, author of Embroidery Stitches (Batsford, 1963)