Storytelling, Stitch and Folk Imagination

Alex Anne Goodwin has been a resident member of Textiles Hub London since 2018. A British textile designer and embroiderer with North American heritage, she has developed a distinctive practice that combines narrative embroidery, hand painting and patchwork to create richly tactile works inspired by memory, colour and everyday storytelling. Since graduating from Chelsea College of Art, University of the Arts London, her work has embodied the belief that textiles can communicate feeling with remarkable directness through the simplest of materials and gestures.

Born in coastal Maine and raised in London, Goodwin draws inspiration from both places. The shifting colours of the Atlantic landscape, alongside the rich visual life of London, continue to inform her intuitive approach to colour, texture and composition. Her work possesses the warmth and immediacy of contemporary folk art, creating embroidered objects that celebrate joy, domestic rituals and the quiet narratives woven through everyday life. Whether working on embroidered panels, decorative objects or wearable pieces, she creates intimate works that invite close looking through their honesty, humour and handcrafted character.

Before establishing her own studio, Goodwin spent six years working with Oxfam, helping to extend the life of discarded textiles through community workshops and collaborations with sustainable designers. She later travelled extensively, studying textile traditions in countries including Japan and India, where encounters with historic embroidery, kimono culture and handmade techniques deepened her appreciation of the ways materials carry cultural memory across generations. She subsequently completed a PGCE in Secondary Education, reflecting her enduring commitment to sharing textile knowledge through teaching as well as practice.

Alongside her independent studio, Goodwin now serves as Material Librarian at Spinocchia Freund, the award-winning London interior architecture and design practice renowned for its highly bespoke residential and hospitality projects. In this role she curates and manages an extensive library of luxury materials, textiles and finishes that underpin the studio’s design process. The position reflects her exceptional eye for colour, tactility and material relationships, demonstrating how the sensibilities developed through embroidery and handmaking can inform contemporary interior architecture at the highest level.

Goodwin’s own practice remains rooted in making by hand. Her embroidered works often combine painted surfaces, stitched details and found materials into playful compositions that recall the spirit of traditional folk art while remaining unmistakably contemporary. There is a natural elegance to her use of colour and an instinctive sartorial flair in the way she brings together contrasting fabrics, threads and decorative elements. Her work suggests that beauty can emerge through sincerity, curiosity and the expressive possibilities of everyday materials, creating objects that feel both deeply personal and universally welcoming.

Alex Anne Goodwin exemplifies Textiles Hub London’s commitment to nurturing artists whose practices connect craftsmanship, storytelling and material intelligence. Her journey from sustainable textiles and embroidery to luxury interior design demonstrates how textile thinking can move fluidly between community engagement, education, contemporary craft and the built environment. Through artists such as Goodwin, Textiles Hub London continues to champion practices that reveal the enduring power of materials to communicate identity, imagination and human connection.

Further information: https://www.alexannestudio.com