The Team

Significant Seams is run on a day to day basis by a dedicated team who are investing their time in the values, aspirations, and creative ideas of this social enterprise. We effectively work as volunteers, though we hope to eventually create modest incomes for ourselves. We believe in “enough.” We each want ‘enough’ to live reasonably – but we also have had ‘enough’ – of systems that don’t work – that let down vulnerable people, catapulting too many of them into crisis.

We also believe fundamentally in the power of creating to build confidence, offer solace, find voice, promote healing, and to have fun, make friends, and enrich lives. We believe in ethical consumption, i.e. choosing to buy what we need with consideration to how the items are produced, their quality, and how profits from their purchase will be used. We hope you will consider these factors and decide to purchase supplies, gifts, and lessons from us. Your purchases will enable community building activities and support services.

We are:

Kate is a fine art embroiderer and a writer. She teaches embroidery, delivers much of our outreach activity, and is taking on managing and writing our bi-weekly newsletter. She has just graduated from Falmouth University with a first and we’re all incredibly proud to work with her. She also has a fabulous personal style, vintage, feminine and slightly “psychobitch.” Her art works are for sale online here.

 

Debs is humble and claims to just be a knitter – but we all know she’s the one we go to with any question in textile construction. She teaches Mini-Me (our intro to clothes making class), crochets shopping bags from… recycled shopping bags, manages the Hub, leads our outreach activities, and keeps track of our finances. Her first love is knitting though, so we try to protect ‘enough’ time so she gets something made every week.

 

Mark is annoyingly talented and likeable. He knits, paints, illustrates, and makes astounding micro mosaics. He also whittled our first pair of extreme knitting needles out of broom handles. He teaches knitting, literally ‘mans’ the Hub, and keeps our grant writing, meeting having,  business planning, and laughing rota on track. As an experienced management consultant, he basically makes all the best ideas look like someone else’s.

Catherine is a quilter and our founder. She likes to think of everything as a patchwork, and patchwork as a metaphor for everything. She loves that patchwork tradition suggests a quilt without a mistake is bad luck – and suggests the more mistakes we make the luckier we are. She is passionate about the power of craft, and a little bit clever at linking causes, projects and partners – you know, into a patchwork.