My little fox in OX magazine

A lovely surprise for September - my little fox is in the Local Talent art spread of the September 2026 OX Magazine!

I made him for the Textiles In Oxford 'Into The Woods' 6x6 inch canvas theme at our exhibition in Wantage earlier this year. I really wanted to make a cute little fox as they're one of my favourite animals. Weirdly enough, I don't see them around much in this fairly rural Oxfordshire town surrounded by countryside, whereas I see them all the time in my coastal hometown in Sussex!

How I made my scrappy little fox using leftover material

Like most textile artists and anyone who enjoys sewing, I often refer to my 'stash' as a source of both joy and frustration. It's far too big, and yet I can't stop adding to it, 'just in case' the 1cm wide fabric leftover of some cute printed material comes in handy for something down the line. So on this occasion, I found some scraps of the orange fabric on my desk and in my sewing box, which I'd previously made a fox art doll with, and which I'd originally been given by my sister about 15 years ago when she was using it for a project at school.

Art as mindfulness! Or something...

He was just a quick experiment initially as I was feeling huffy and wanted to make something to focus my mind and get me out of a bad mood. I wanted to make him with all kinds of fabric scraps behind him in greens and golds, as though he was sitting on a scrappy pile of leaves in a forest. That didn't really work out how I wanted it to, so I ended up chopping those bits off eventually, and sewing him onto the painted and embroidered woodland tree background. In fact, I sewed him to the backing fabric, changed my mind a lot around placement etc, and then chopped off the scrappy grass bits way later as I couldn't really get them to work (back to the stash they go!). It would have been far easier had I just sewn him directly onto backing fabric in the first place! He's really tiny and still very detailed, which I really love about him, so I expect I'll be making more teeny detailed creatures in future!