Lesley Brankin is a freelance needlecraft designer. She lives and works in Malvern, Worcestershire, UK. During the last fourteen years she has built up a solid reputation for her innovative design work. In addition, she has published more than 200 designs of needlework and patchwork. From May 2002 to July 2007 she was an Assistant Editor of British Patchwork & Quilting magazine.
Lesley has been the recipient of a number of national and international prizes for her work, both needlecraft and patchwork. Also she received major awards at Quilts UK, Festival of Quilts and the European Quilt Championships. Her Noughts and Crosses quilt won 1st Place in the Contemporary Large category at Festival of Quilts 2007.
Lesley has designed projects and written articles for a lot of UK Needlecraft magazines. For example, for Patchwork & Quilting, Classic Stitches, Popular Patchwork, Cross Stitcher, Needlecraft, Cross Stitch Collection, World of Cross Stitching, Card Shop and Cross Stitch Crazy.
Relationships with Product Distributors and Manufacturers
Lesley maintains close working relationships with many product distributors and manufacturers. She supports and promotes their products through use in her published designs and on occasions producing exclusive showcase projects and articles for them.
City & Guilds trained in embroidery and design, Lesley teaches design, patchwork and embroidery techniques, including undertaking workshops and demonstrations on behalf of the Quilters' Guild of the British Isles.
She draws much of her inspiration for her design work from five main sources: her family, nature, architecture, historical artefacts and ethnic cultures. But she readily turns her hand to most subjects and always enjoys a challenge!
Her foundation books, as well as the two patterns she mentions are available on our website.
You can find out more about Lesley on her website.
Click here to learn more about Valerie Nesbitt.
Click here to watch the full length version of this Taster
This video clip was used as the taster for non-members. As well as it didn’t want you to miss out on all the plans for the future.
Craig Joubert from Marbling 4 Fun allows Valerie to design her own piece of fabric, but not on the scraps she bought to the studio, and we find out why, and how you can test whether or not fabric is suitable with a very simple test.
Valerie selects a few of her favourite colours, to create her ve...
Craig shows us how to create this lovely Christmas tree shape with his marbling paints. Why not utilise some of the paper that might otherwise be popped in to the bin!
This technique can also be used with more commercial stencils. Craig demonstrates using one with a word on it. Resulting in a...
