It all started in 2002 as a tattoo studio!

Montrose, 1st of April 2002, the day I opened the doors to, my tiny multi award winning tattoo studio, Ink Minx, I hit the ground running! Until over two decades of constant tattooing took it’s toll on my hands, I realised it was time to slow down. Then Covid came along and we all found ourselves housebound, I decided to put this time to good use and bought myself a sewing machine. masks became the easy thing to sew and this soon grew into making my own clothing and some very crazy animal dolls

As my sewing addiction rapidly grew, I started looking out for a better sewing machine. Sadly we also lost a family friend, who i’d known all my life, she was a great supporter of my art and avid crafter. I was asked to have a look at some of the machines she had and sort them into lots, this is where I discovered the home embroidery machine! So I ended up adopting two very old machines, one could only take pre-loaded floppy disks with designs, the other had a connection for a flash drive, in my naive excitement, I thought I could somehow just transform my artwork onto my machine and stitch it out! however, I very quickly realised this would not be the case as there was so much more to it than that. So for now I had to pay to get my designs digitised, this did not sit well with me, particularly as there was such a vast difference in the quality of the end result.

Back into another lockdown, I really wanted to learn how to “digitise”, this is the art of turning any design into stitches and into a language understood by my embroidery machine. I joined as many groups as I could find on Facebook and soon found that the groups run by the Deer family’s Embroidery Legacy, to be the most educational and friendly spaces, I signed up to the 30 day free trial of Hatch software and the courses and got stuck in. There was so much to learn but it became quite intuitive to me and before long and with lots of help from my now friend and mentor Christine, I was stitching out my own work and it was being received extremely well.

unbeknown to me, during all the time I was posting my work, John Deer himself had been keeping an eye on my progress, so you can imagine my delight when he got in touch asking me if I would be interested in working with him on a future project that he couldn’t actually tell me about but would be in touch! Of course, without hesitation, I jumped at the chance. All the time I had been digitising, I was wondering why there was no software that could be used on an IPad, I realised that this kind of software is hefty on memory but never the less, it would be amazing if it existed.

A few months passed and John got in touch again asking me to trial his new software, the Design Doodler, saying he thought it would be perfect for my style of work and low and behold, it turned out to be software that can be used on an iPad, giving the user a completely different digitising experience, it broke the restraints of the conventional software and meant I could sketch and transform my art into stitches, instantly! It was like all my creative worlds collided into this amazing piece of software and I now find I can create the embroidery art I was initially hoping to achieve from the day the addiction set in.

Along with his family, John has a small team of talented individuals, i’m extremely proud to be part of that team, along with some other projects, i’ve also created some tutorials that are included with the software. Without the enthusiasm and education I received in my early months from the Deer family and associated groups, I would never have come this far. So if you are reading this as a keen machine embroiderer looking to dip their toes into digitising, I cannot recommend contacting The Deer’s Embroidery Legacy highly enough.

It’s been an amazing journey so far, which has led me to completely rebrand my studio, we are now The Bob Tree, one branch still tattooing with a collective of very talented artists and the other, allows me to able to take myself off on new creative stitchy paths. I have just released my new series of locally inspired embroidery scapes, called “Stitchy Stories from the North East” and i’m currently working on building my digital library of designs that can be downloaded in your machines format.

Thank you for taking the time to read my story and please contact me if you would like more information on my stitchy creations.

In memory of Helen Adams, a path i’d never have considered if i’d not adopted your old Husky, Judi x