My first holiday and visit to the the seaside was when I was just a couple of months old. We stayed in a relative’s caravan at Treaddur Bay. Here I am with my mum and grandpa.

After a few years my relatives moved caravan and went to a different site. It’s the caravan at this site that I remember most clearly and that has inspired me to make my textile caravans. Unfortunately we don’t have any photos of the caravan but there are some of me on the site.

The caravan was called “Bluebird” and it had a stained glass window in it’s door featuring a blue bird. It had wooden cupboards and fittings and gas lighting, something that scared me a little. The beds had to be made up each night with a folding partition separating where my mum and dad slept from me and my sister.

I always wished that I could stay longer on these holidays, something about the freedom of the seaside and the novelty of caravan life. A few years ago I took my own children to visit Treaddur Bay, you can read about that holiday here.

Much of my work is about memories and nostalgia and the vintage fabrics I have used in my textile caravans remind me of the furnishings and patterns of my childhood.

The backs of the caravans are hand embroidered with text, evoking that holiday feeling.

There’s a little fleet of these caravans waiting to be made, so there will be more in my shop soon.