STUDIO: Poppy Treffry

Today we are happy to be given a tour of Poppy Treffry's studio overlooking Newlyn Harbour on the Cornish coast.  It is now eight years since Poppy Treffry first started selling her fabulous machine embroidered textiles, now supplying more than 200 shops in the UK and Japan, including Selfridges and Fortnum & Mason. 

Our studio is in Newlyn which is a busy, messy, industrious fishing village in the west of Cornwall. We have to walk past the fish markets and often climb over nets and dead fish to reach our door!  

I'm quite skilled with mdf these days and when we first moved into our studio I built big shelves across one wall and also a great big cutting table. The table houses all my fabric piles and is where we cut the weeks orders and its also where I 'hoop up' my embroidery. 

I needed the studio to be functional and its design has really evolved over time. When we first moved into it we shared the space with 3 other companies and over time we've 'swallowed' up their spaces as well which have in turn provided us with an office, a dispay area and storage space. I'd describe the overall feel as pretty clutter!

From our studio window we overlook Newlyn harbour, across Penzance to the Jubillee Pool and then out to St Michaels mount, you can't help but feel a bit inspired when you look out. I also keep all my sketch books and favourite scraps of fabric there and this is where I turn at the start of designing a new collection. 

image credit Mike Thomas

I think my sewing machine desk is my favourite place because it's where ideas really start to take shape. I like to fill the wall  behind the machine with lots of pretty little pictures and mood boards and then there's fabrics piles and cotton reels surrounding me.
 

Poppy Treffry www.poppytreffry.co.uk