Alison Larkin

Alison Larkin has been an embroiderer and dressmaker for most of her life, but since 2013 she has been able to pursue this full-time, rather than just evenings/weekends. Work on replicas, first of a waistcoat, then a Map Sampler, both originally stitched by Elizabeth Cook, wife of Capt. James Cook the navigator, led to research on Georgian embroidery. Both works have been exhibited in museums. She has studied techniques and patterns used on extant examples during the 18th and early 19th centuries, and used this to inform making costumes for herself to use for lectures and demonstrating work. She also makes research-based 1/12 scale miniatures of 17/18th century embroidered items.

The discovery of rare Georgian embroidery patterns published in The Lady’s Magazine by Prof. Jennie Batchelor (University of Kent) has led to a collaboration with Jennie in collecting and cataloguing these patterns, which were originally published monthly from 1770-1819. This in turn led to the development of embroidery projects based on the patterns, and to the publication of Jane Austen Embroidery in 2020.

Alison is now collecting and researching embroidery patterns from the later Georgian period. She also lectures on embroidery and teaches/demonstrates historical needlework (particularly Georgian period), as well as exhibiting her work and working to commission, both in full-size and miniature.