Julia Line

If you want to bake a Julia Line (or Jools to friends) of your own you’ll need to take equal measures of Seaforth Highlander, Geordie chambermaid, Dutch kapper and a court dressmaker with auburn hair. Then add a love of colour/running dogs, some very hard knocks, a generous pinch or three of humour, plenty of sunshine and stir vigorously. Now leave the mixture to rise for a while, then pop it in the oven on a greased baking sheet (you don’t want me to stick) and stand well back.

I grew up in post-war London – all bomb sites, thick yellow fogs and make do and mend. I’m the second daughter of an only child whose tea leaf reading skills were legendary in bomb alley South London during the Second World War so it’s hardly surprising that I was born with second sight passed on from my mother.

During my time on this earth I’ve been an art student, a barmaid, a book-keeper, a clairvoyant, a stable girl and now I’m the needle behind Long Dog Samplers. My embroidery teeth were cut on transfer printed tray cloths bedecked with lazy daisy stitch and napkins with lace edgings. All very boring, predictable and unexciting but it wasn’t until I reached my mid-forties that I finally decided to shake things up a bit and got around to doing something about it.

Antique samplers are undeniably very beautiful and reflect perfectly the prevailing sentiments and fashions of the period in which they were stitched. But as I’m not a virginal maiden from the 1800’s with a desire to extol “virtue” on drab cloth with a limited pallet of colours any attempt to emulate that particular style would be anathema to me.

I want colour that’s in your face one moment and subtly blended the next. I want more motifs to the inch. I want to mix my metaphors and use new words. But, above all else, I want to encourage others to take their needles and my ideas and run with them as fast and as far as their imaginations will take them. I want to take samplers screaming and kicking into the 21st century, the digital age where we do things not necessarily better but certainly differently. I started Long Dog Samplers in 1996 and twenty five years later it’s still going strong.