Well I'll be darned! How a Brighouse art teacher has turned her love of textiles into a 'sew-cial media' sensation

Becoming a ‘sew-cial’ media sensation wasn’t Anne Brooke’s intention. It was an accidental destination she arrived at through unique circumstances.

Although Anne’s role teaching art at Brighouse High School kept her busy, caring for the children of key workers during the Covid pandemic, there were days when, like many, she wanted a distraction from lockdown life.

It began with a stitching challenge she set herself on Sunday evenings to distract her from the working week ahead.

Brandishing the beautiful wooden bobbin given to her by a friend she met on one of the many crafting workshops she has attended over the years, Anne carefully unfolds the intricately stitched and embellished fabric rolled around what is now a wonderful wall hanging.

“On a Sunday evening I would stitch into some fabric and film myself doing it. I put it on Youtube to share what I was doing.”

Confined within four walls during lockdown was when Anne’s stitching sessions began to take off.

“As we were at home 24/7 I needed a distraction beyond school work, so I started recording and sharing the stitching I was doing. I didn’t like the – not a lot to do, as I was still working online teaching during the day. People started finding me on Youtube and were asking if they could stitch along with me.”

Fabric books with wadding pages ornately decorated with bullion knot buttons and Suffolk puffs and other embellishments; elaborately decorated paper luggage tags; flags and quilts all stitched with memories from fabrics re-purposed and brought to life in a tangible form rather than stuffed away in a jar or box, are just some of the projects Anne has led since setting up her Youtube channel in 2020.

“I set the challenge we are doing and everybody stitches, creating an online community of stitches,” explains Anne, who says it reminds her of watching her mum stitching around the kitchen table with her friends. By the end of her first year she had amassed 10,000 followers.

“And that was just in a year!” said Anne, who believes being left-handed is particularly beneficial to participants.

The overwhelming response to the weekly challenges, tagged ‘#52’ for every week of the year, and knowing the benefits the stitching sessions were bringing to her followers, gave Anne the impetus to continue. She asked her crafty followers to send her their favourite tag from the ‘#52taghannemade’ first half of the year. Initially she received 37 envelopes through the post, but the response was such she ended up having to put a box in the doorway to accommodate the amount of tags arriving.

Anne also put a map on the wall to identify where her followers were from. “They started coming from abroad, US, Canada, South America, India, Australia, the whole of Europe and the whole of the UK.

She recalls the first tag she and her eldest daughter opened.

The meaningful message within was from a family recently bereaved. Anne knew the preparation and time spent doing the online sessions was worth every minute for the difference it was making to her followers’ lives. She also runs ‘The Stitching Hour,’ and is developing Wobble Gob Wednesdays and Wobble Gob Wellness sessions for those, like her, who like to chat!

Sewing had been a constant thread from childhood, along with art – creativity was in the genes.

“I suppose my mum was my biggest influence. When I was younger she was a painter, she did floral things for Church and really encouraged me and my sister to do what we wanted to do.”

Completing her Art degree at Salford University, and a teaching qualification, enabled Anne to eventually combine her creativity with her career working initially in education in Lincoln.

Marriage to husband Robert brought Anne, who is originally from Silkstone Common near Barnsley, to Brighouse in 1998 where, for more than 20 years, she has taught art at Brighouse High School. Until recently she was head of the school’s art department.

Demand from her social media presence prompted her to teach part-time so she can focus on developing the online sewing community she started to help fellow crafters cope with lockdown life.

“I try to upcycle as much as possible and when my mum passed away I found she had the dress making patterns from the clothes she had made us when we were little so I started to include them in my work. One thing that has under-pinned my whole work has been journeys and memories.”

She connects with her online crafting community from the comfort of her studio and sewing room in the family home she shares with Robert and their daughters Harriett and Neve.

Samples of her work, bearing the strapline ‘#4theloveofstitch’ decorate the walls and cupboard doors. It’s a light and airy space and reflective of her creative spirit. Embroidery hoops hang above her desk where work is underway on a part-painted hoop. Anne explains this particular project is ‘Whole Hole.’

“The ‘whole’ represents me, the whole person, but I realised the physical ‘hole’ is my Mum because she isn’t here any more and that is the inspiration for the hoop series. It is stitched with all my colours and I have been teaching myself darning – the idea with darning is what you do if you have a hole you repair it. I wouldn’t be doing this if my Mum hadn’t encouraged me.”

Before launching her online presence through her sewing channel and her sewing and haberdashery website - H-Anne-Made and H-Anne-adashery – a play on her name and her passion for handmaking – she showcased her work at events including the annual ‘Art in the Pen,’ ‘Crafts in the Pen’ and Yarndale at Skipton Auction Mart and Saltaire Arts Trail.

She also participated in the first Calderdale Open Arts Exhibition, and the British Craft and Trade Fair in Harrogate.

She said this was all part of the important journey which features throughout her work.

“When I first started working on my own things I developed paper stitch collages – because I am art trained I was happier working with paper than fabric, but I love stitches. I use my sewing machine as a drawing tool. All my pictures were based on walks I had been on – I’m obsessed with flowers and plants and I would try to do a map of either where I had been on a walk or somewhere that was important to me.”

Framed postcards from the 1940s she sourced from charity shops and transformed with artistic hand stitching and embellishments are among the pieces of beautiful hand-made objects of art displayed around the walls of the purpose-built craft room dominating the outside space of her Brighouse home.

Floral printed table cloths decorate the wooden tables arranged around this tranquil creative space where Anne can let her creative flair truly flow.

“Postcards were things to do with journeys. I was thinking about journeys and whenever we went on holiday we always sent postcards. I love the fact they have been written on and posted.

"I did a series of them because I enjoyed doing them. Ideas pop into my head because we are in such a visual world – you see things all the time.”

Anne has self-published two books on stitching and is keen to participate in exhibitions in future.

For now she is enjoying the journey and sharing her skill with others.

“Most of the time I am sewing, I cannot sit and do nothing. What keeps me going is thinking people are waiting for the next thing. It is just nice knowing people like what I do.”

For more details see: www.h-anne-made.co.uk