“I love making things – I always had a sewing room, even as a schoolteacher”
products to show off my designs and get into the marketplace,” Nicola says. “Also, I love making things – I always had a sewing room, even as a schoolteacher. The first item I made was a laptop case, because I couldn’t find one I liked.” It would be easy to assume that Nicola would have started her business earlier had circumstances allowed but she says not: “For me, the timing was right, with some savings behind me, and the family grown up. When I was choosing a career at 18, I loved art but I knew my job prospects would be better with a chemistry degree, and I had always wanted to teach.”
Once Madder Cutch & Co was up and running, Nicola had a stroke of luck when a friend told her about Helen Cormack, the founder of Tissus d’hélène, a boutique showroom specialising in hand-printed fabrics and papers. She emailed her and was amazed to get a reply the next day: “Helen liked my designs and encouraged me to develop my ideas. She has remained supportive ever since.”
Over the past two years, Nicola has had time to fine-tune the process of transferring flower to fabric, which she does using a traditional screen-printing technique. The design is photographically stencilled onto a screen – a frame containing a fine mesh that is coated with a light-sensitive emulsion. When exposed to a light source, through a film or acetate printed with the design, the emulsion sets in the areas the light has reached, blocking some holes in the mesh. The fabric is placed on the printing table and the screen set on top; then the coloured dye pastes are dragged over the mesh using a squeegee, the colour going through the open holes to reveal the design. To apply a second colour, another screen must be used.
While Nicola is keen to share her knowledge, often working with an intern – she recruited her current one at the Country Living Spring Fair in 2017 – there is one aspect of the process she keeps to herself. She won’t divulge how she makes the dye pastes, saying only that her method involved a lot of experimentation and patience. It’s clear there are other secrets to her success, but she modestly says, “I don’t see myself as an artist. I am more of an artisan, offering a bespoke service. I control the whole process, from start to finish.” And she is determined to keep her business small: “I am not an entrepreneur, which to me implies being commercial. I never want to mass-produce or be bought by a big company – I would like each one of my designs to offer my customers something special.”