Greetings world says goodbye to renowned textile artist
Textile artist Abigail Mill, well known for her work in the greeting card and gift world and widely loved for her gentle, kind nature, has died following a brain tumour diagnosis earlier this year.
Known for her licensed work with publishers including Emma Ball Ltd and Nigel Quiney Publications as well as her own greeting card designs, Norfolk-based Abigail passed away on Saturday, 20 July.
Emma Ball paid tribute to her friend and colleague: “A force of nature, a shining star of positivity, kind, loyal, beautiful, humble, talented and an amazing friend, colleague, mother and artist.
“It was truly an honour to work with her the past eight years. Abbi spread colour wherever she went. She made the world a brighter place. Our love goes out to her family – shine bright Abbi, you will be much missed.”
Having trained in embroidery at Cumbria College Of Art & Design in 1990, Abigail developed a distinctive technique of layering hand-dyed printed cottons, combined with free-motion machine embroidery to create landscapes and other imagery.
The fabric edges were left raw and frayed giving an ethereal effect that is sometimes confused with watercolour, when viewed from a distance.
She set up business initially with a grant from the Prince’s Trust and began selling her work through exhibitions and trade shows, and recently returned to her roots in the Waveney Valley on the Norfolk-Suffolk border where she ran face-to-face creative machine embroidery courses, as well as working on her own designs.
Abigail had also published books including Waveney Valley Wildlife Embroidered By Abigail Mill, and she proudly announced in March that her first book Appliqué Art, from 2014, was to be republished this month by Search Press.
She had been posting on social media about her illness, telling the followers she called her “lovely textile fam” in March that “I have a couple of brain tumours…never done anything by halves!”, and a brain biopsy in April confirmed they were malignant.
Abigail leaves her partner Dave and two daughters, and her sister Sam who posted on her Facebook page this week: “It is with the heaviest of hearts that I am writing to let you know that on Saturday evening, Abbi spread her angel wings and took to the skies to paint the heavens a rainbow of colours. The world will be a less colourful place without her brilliance.”
