Nell is an award-winning contemporary textile artist, specialising in free form machine embroidery. She essentially draws and paints with thread, using the needle as her pencil, and the fabric as her canvas. Nell’s artwork has always had sculptural elements, using fabrics and stabilizers to create 3D art. Currently she employs techniques to sculpt using only stitched thread.

Her process is unusual: embroidery traditionally is used to decorate and embellish a cloth with stitching, she uses embroidery to make the cloth with just stitches and she manipulates that into a decorative form. Nell uses basic machine straight and zig zag stitch to create non traditional sculptural forms. Creating sculptures that are stand alone, sturdy sculptural artworks from a spool (or more!) of thread both challenges and excites he, she thrives to create unique stitched thread art

Nell completed her HND and BA Hons in Fashion and Textile Design in the UK during this time she discovered her passion for machine embroidery. Nell’s explorations with free form machine embroidery are self taught and in the Summer of 2005 she completed a City & Guilds Level 3 Machine Embroidery Course which allowed her to take her ‘explorations’ to a higher level. Shortly after completing her City and Guilds Nell moved from the UK to BC, Canada, where she became a full-time textile artist.