My name is Amy and I am a historian, an embroiderer and a reader.  

Contact on info@sewmanybook.co.uk

Mum and Dad taught me to read with Peter and Jane books before I started school – and I have read voraciously ever since. As a young child, I loved fairy and folk tales: my grandparents had a marvellous set of large bound volumes.  I read anything to do with witches and schools (and books about schools for witches did exist before Harry Potter).  Some of my favourite books were When Marnie was there by Joan G. Robinson, A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley and Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer – books with history and mystery.  I read The Lord of the Rings (J.R.R.Tolkein) and Watership Down (Richard Adams) just before my teenage years and both these books remain special to me today. 

In the years before YA fiction was such a phenomenon, transitioning from children’s to adult literature was not easy, which is why so many young readers stopped reading during their teens.  One way in was through the classics, which were readily available in the school library and which the town librarians were also happy to let young people borrow.  I read Jane Eyre (Charlotte Brontё), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontё) and Tess of the D’Urbervilles (Thomas Hardy) and the work of Jane Austen.  I still read classics today, looking to the wonderful annual booktube event Victober for inspiration. 

Today, I always have both a fiction and a non-fiction book on the go, at least one of which has to be light enough to carry around and read on the train.  I enjoy contemporary literary – but not too experimental – fiction, historical fiction, history, travel and nature writing.  Some of my favourite authors are Jonathan Coe, Robert Harris, Kazuo Ishiguro and Tracy Chevalier.

I began embroidery using kits, which I inaccurately called tapestry kits, which involved stitching tent stitch over pictures printed on canvas.  I progressed from there onto counted cross stitch kits. I was also lucky enough to learn lace-making in a school club.   I expanded my horizons with needlework magazines, such as Mary Hickmott’s New Stitches, and learnt free-style embroidery, blackwork, hardanger, felt-making and other techniques.  I have attended short courses and summer schools at the marvellous West Dean College and developed my confidence in designing for myself.  A summer school with Cas Holmes resulted in a particular leap forward. During the covid lockdown, I completed a City and Guilds level 3 hand embroidery course with the School of Stitched Textiles and conceived the idea for ‘Sew Many Books’ whilst working on my design for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.