My workshop is six metres by four.

People sometimes ask, when they hear I make curtains for a living, whether I have a "studio." I do not have a studio. I have a workshop in Larkhall, six metres by four, with one window facing east and a cutting table that is just barely long enough for a pair of full-drop curtains for a tall room. There is no signage outside. There is a wooden door painted French blue. My machines are a Pfaff 1469 from 1994 that was my mother's and a newer Husqvarna for the heavy linings.

I tell you this because the picture in your head, when you imagine someone who makes things by hand, is probably wrong. The reality is small rooms, old machines, careful hands. There is romance in this work but the romance lives in the cloth, not in the premises.