Heritage and history

Mixing it up with texture and colour while taking inspiration from around the world.

Jacqueline Fleming spent her formative years holidaying with her parents at Polzeath in Cornwall, and now follows in that family tradition with her own children. By her own admission she has a very strong attachment to the place and consequently there are strands of this emotional thread that are visible through her choice of fabrics and colours that form the basis for Estuary Textiles. 

From a small shop situated in Wadebridge where, as she says, “I have a wide range of customers visiting the shop. From young people just learning to sew, fashion and textile students at local colleges, to keen stitchers and professional makers and artists. What is so wonderful is that the textiles I sell fit perfectly into both coastal and country homes.” The perfect melding of the sea and land that finds form in the cloth.

Stocking everything from antique handmade quilts to French linen sheets and traditional Welsh blankets, Jacqueline’s passion and eye for the unusual is evident. Bright colours jump out at you from fabric imagined and conceived by post-war women designers who came to prominence during the Festival of Britain in 1951 as well as artists commissioned to help bring the 1960s to life through fabric design. Each promise to make an exciting addition to your home today. What’s more, Jacqueline will cut any material to the size you need for your project: “I have a colleague in Padstow who makes items for customers if they don’t have the time or skills to create something themselves.”

To give you more of an idea of what you can expect to find, we asked her about the obvious global influences that permeate the shop: “We have made lampshades from Kuba cloth from the Congo. Woven from raffia, dyed with pigments from mud and decoratively stitched with cowries, these lampshades add wonderful texture to a home. There is a range of cushions made with traditionally woven Kutnu silk from Turkey, edged in pleated fabric from the Hill Tribes of Northern Vietnam. Closer to home are 19th Century French nightshirts, canvas smocks from 1970s Penzance and fisherman’s guernseys knitted a generation ago which still have another generation’s worth of life in them.” In this small shop, that pays homage to some of the world’s most beautiful textiles, you are bound to find something to suit your taste and budget.

Estuary Textiles

estuarytextiles