HAVING started making clothes on her mother’s Singer sewing machine the age of six, Catherine Howard, from Darlington, was perhaps destined to become a designer. It’s only in the last few years after deciding to quit her day job and go back to college, however, that it has finally become a reality.
Catherine, who gave up a ten-year career in hotel management, is now a fashion and textiles lecturer and runs a business designing waistcoats.
Her interest in dress-making started when she was six years old, watching her mum pedalling away at her sewing machine.
“I loved how she took pieces of fabric and somehow put them together to make me the most gorgeous dresses.
No one else had anything like them,” she says.
It wasn’t long before her legs were long enough to reach the pedals and by the age of nine, Catherine was making clothes for herself. “I used to sew my finger all the time and always cut the tablecloth,” she recalls.
“There were pins everywhere, my mum used to go absolutely mad because they’d always go in the Hoover and break it.”
Being the 1980s, there was plenty of scope for imagination and Catherine has vivid memories of striding down the street in a yellow tartan suit – one of her most memorable designs.
“I used to be a barmaid and remember walking into the pub in this bright yellow tartan suit and winkle pickers, thinking I was the bees knees,” she says. “I had hair like Rod Stewart and was really going for the Eighties look. I also made jodhpurs.
They weren’t made properly and went really tight at the knee so it looked like I had two wings at the side of my hips. I looked like Russ Abbott.”
Although her sewing skills improved, it was just a hobby and Catherine never considered doing it as a career. She got a job as a receptionist and toiled in the hotel and catering trade for ten years, working her way up to become sales and banqueting manager. She travelled all over the UK and was living in Oxford when she started to think about becoming a designer.
“I was asked to do quite a few prom dresses and someone said, haven’t you thought about doing it as a career?
I didn’t think I’d get a place at college but my brother had retrained and I thought if he can do it, so can I,” she says.
Catherine wanted to study in London, but couldn’t afford it so she moved back in with her parents and re-trained in Hartlepool instead.
“I remember waking up in this little single bed in my mum and dad’s house and my dad shouting, ‘Catherine, do you want a cup of tea?’,” she says.
Going back to college as a mature student at the age of 31 took a bit of getting used to – as did the commute – she had to get up at 6.30 every morning and had a two-hour bus journey (including one change and a half hour wait) to Hartlepool, as well as working weekends and Monday nights at a call centre.
Four years down the line, it was all worth it. Catherine has a BA Hons in Textile & Surface Design and passed her PGCE, enabling her to lecture in fashion and textiles. In the past two years, she has also built up a business designing waistcoats using new and recycled fabrics and charity shop finds such as old wool skirts, suits and cotton shirts. “I use as much vintage fabric as I can, I love making bespoke tailored waistcoats,”
she says. “Everyone says a waistcoat is a waistcoat – it’s not.
The way you embellish it can make it totally original.”
Mixing traditional wools and tweed with contemporary screen printing Catherine takes inspiration from the outdoors, such as the Yorkshire Dales. She is currently working with fine artist John Hebborn (johnhebborn.
co.uk) on a small fashion collection next summer, as well as photographer David Williams, of Calico Images (calicoimages.co.uk), using his wildlife photography to produce an interiors collection.
“I’ve basically said, you’ve got these beautiful pictures, let’s get them onto fabric and see what we can do,” she says.
As well as her own designs, Catherine does professional talks and workshops and is keen to encourage young embroiderers. She recently became a representative for the North East Embroiderers’ Guild.
“I really want to show them how easy it is to embellish a top or a pair of jeans by using simple techniques such as applique and basic traditional embroidery stitches, which are used all the time in the latest fashions,” she says.
Like more and more people these days, who juggle more than one job to earn a living, she also works part time at The Nest Art Gallery & Café, in Barnard Castle, organising exhibitions and events.
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