For the new 2020 Royal Opera House production of Fidelio, I was asked to provide the waistcoat embroidery for the character Florestan performed by Jonas Kaufmann. It is based on the design from Otto van Randwijck, however I have redesigned a lot to make it neater and the colours have changed a great deal. All the French Knots are hand embroidered on top of the machine embroidery, as it is screened in cinemas too so great detail was required. The waistcoat has been made in house and then got broken down. On the second and third photo you can see the waistcoat in its full glory. This is the cover waistcoat which I got to construct myself, including his breeches and also other costumes for the chorus.

The full opera can be watched on BBC iPlayer until June 2021.

Production photo credit: Bill Cooper

As the first Stephanie Arditti Bursary recipient from MGCfutures, I was able to explore a career in digital embroidery as a new learned skill in my final year at Wimbledon College of Arts. The bursary allowed me to invest in the software needed to digitise embroidery designs. In between jobs I have started digisiting samples of 18th century embroidery, of which you can see the first one on the left as a sample print (the white should be more cream, which I did not have at the time). This is taken from a suit I saw during my research on the MET museum website.

I have since invested in an embroidery machine and have been given the opportunity to create embroidery work as well as making costumes for film during 2020/2021.

During my final year, I created a Habit à la Française with digital machine embroidery. Before this, I had never used the software or an embroidery machine but with support of Wilcom EmbroideryStudio Designing and some online help I was able to recreate the habit that was once worn by Otto Baron van Randwijck in The Netherlands. The base was all done by machine with hand sewn French Knots added in on top to give more of a 3D effect.

For the new Royal Opera House production of Hansel and Gretel 2018 I provided machine embroidered buttons designs for the Cinderella's Prince costume, stitched in metallic threads.

For my second costume in my final year at Wimbledon I also used digital embroidery to create the outlines of the bows and apron to mimic the graphic style of Erté's design for Der Rosenkavelier for Glyndebourn in the 1980's.