021. Earthsong Seeds
The Herbalists Bringing Nature’s Medicine Cabinet to Your Garden.
It’s always such a pleasure to share the stories of incredible artisans, and today I’m especially excited to introduce you to Poppy Treffry.
A Cornwall-based designer of colourful textile accessories, whose journey from a humble start with a Singer sewing machine to creating vibrant homewares and gifts is one I truly admire.
Poppy’s story is filled with creativity, determination, and a love for the craft.
I am a textile designer based in Cornwall and founded my business in 2004, working from a net loft in Newlyn. I can’t believe that’s now over 20 years ago. I have been creating colourful accessories and homewares ever since.
Back then I didn’t think of it as a brand, I simply loved making things and wanted to see if I could make a living by selling them. My grandfather found an old Singer sewing machine at a tip and brought it home for me to fix up and experiment on. It took a while to get the hang of it, and the vintage motor and pedal would regularly short out the electrics, but I’ve never looked back. In fact, all the designs are made on these old machines, but they are so robust and can handle all the stitching.
I studied fashion and textile design at Winchester School of Art, specialising in printed textiles so I taught myself to sew and embroider after I graduated.
I use a technique called freehand machine embroidery to create my designs, which is like drawing but using a needle instead of a pencil. I work from my sketches and watercolours with appliquéd fabrics becoming my paint palette.
Transforming my drawings into stitch gives them a greater feeling of movement and freedom and I love to use a lot of colour and humour in my work. It’s not too serious but it’s also not too twee – I try to tread a line between the two.
Since starting the business, it has grown to include a small team who make, package and sell the range. At one point there were 13 of us but we are now a smaller team of 5. You can find my products in boutiques and galleries throughout the UK, USA and Europe.
I’m proud of the fact that my designs are now international.
Mondays are our busiest days with 5 of us in the studio. Whilst I am working on new designs and bespoke collections, Lydia spends the day cutting fabrics for the week’s production which will then be handed over to our stitchers, who sew together our products from home.
Tamsin is our wholesale and production manager who decides what the team will be making each week, works with stockists throughout the UK and overseas and keeps everyone on track.
Natalie does a fab job carefully packing up and sending off orders to our website customers. And finally, Tiahna is our marketing assistant who spends her Mondays making newsletters, scheduling social media content, product photography and other creative bits and pieces.
Together, we make a strong and supportive team. Oh, and of course I can’t forget about Roscoe, my dog and studio mascot!
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I feel very lucky to love what I do and to never find my job boring. I like to have a routine, and I have always had a studio where I have ‘gone to work’ within set hours, making sure work doesn’t spill out into the rest of my life too much.
I will get up before the rest of the family and take the dog out for a run on the beach. Once I get to the studio my day can be very varied. Sometimes I’m designing new products and other days I’m doing VAT returns!
I’m born and raised in Cornwall and can’t imagine being anywhere else. My current studio, where I’ve been for 13 years, is just outside Penzance. I am within easy reach of the coast so I can walk along the beach or take a dip in the sea, something I love being able to do.
Not surprisingly Cornwall is my inspiration; little Cornish fishing villages, abundant hedgerows, boats and birds on the beach. I also get lots of great ideas from my customers and I never get tired of hearing their feedback and what they love.
My studio can be found nestled into a copse of native trees, right near the tip of Cornwall. It’s a peaceful spot that has other small businesses working within the surrounding area so there’s often people passing by. The studio itself is quirkily chaotic with old designs, memories from travels, business highlights and various other collected items covering the walls. It’s filled with floor to ceiling shelves full of our stock so it’s bursting with colour and personality.
You can always hear music playing from our studio as we like to work whilst listening to the radio and shouting out answers to the quizzes.
My whole business started with an appliqued tea cosy and I made it my own style with ticking lining and hanging loop and always a little detail on the back.
I’ve made many different designs over the years including celebratory cosies for Royal Jubilees, which proved incredibly popular and bespoke commissions for customers like Fortnum & Mason, Claridge’s, Bettys of Harrogate and St Michael’s Mount. I’ve loved what the cosies have meant to the business and they’re still very much part of what we do.
Like so many others, the pandemic had a massive effect on my business. With my shop closed and my team mostly furloughed, I started an online embroidery course, Embroidery Club. I added it to my website and pressed go, expecting maybe 30 people to sign up. I checked back a few hours later to find over 700 people had joined!
It was incredibly exciting but a very steep learning curve as I taught myself to video edit, create downloadable patterns, run live sessions not to mention putting together hundreds of material packs.
Five years on and the club is still going strong and is as inspiring for me to run as it is for the members that take part. Creating projects for each course is so much fun and I never seem to struggle to come up with new ideas. Not so far anyway!
There are lots of memorable moments, including Liberty stocking my tea cosies when I had just started up.
More recently I have been able to collaborate with some really exciting customers to produce bespoke ranges.
Probably the proudest moment of running my business was opening my first shop in St. Ives, and then my second shop in Padstow, which was open for a short time.
My St. Ives shop was a colourful mecca of textiles on Fore Street for 10 years until I decided to close it in 2023. My business changed so much during the pandemic that my heart was no longer in bricks and mortar retail, I really felt it was time for the next adventure.
Living and working in the countryside, right on the coast, means that you’re constantly reminded of nature and the impact the decisions you make every day can have on it. That’s why we do all we can to make sure nothing goes to waste whilst making sure our products can be loved and used for years and years.
We use organic cotton where possible, we source most of our products from local manufacturers, and we’re also plastic-free – all to lessen our impact on wildlife and to reduce our impact on the environment.
Championing Cornwall is central to our business and that therefore comes with creating jobs for local people and supporting local businesses who supply us too.
Having run my business for more than 20 years now, I’m feeling a need to focus more and more on the creative side of what I do and less on growing the business and managing a team.
There’s just 5 of us now and we’re a great little team who have worked together for a long time.
I’m lucky to have more bespoke projects in the pipeline. It’s a real joy to take inspiration from a location, creating sketches and collecting ideas and then designing and producing a range to suit their customers.
I’m also spending more time working on one-off art pieces but it’s early days for this so I’m just seeing where things take me.
I think there will always be a product element to my business but I’m excited to explore where a more creative approach will take me.
It’s an exciting time looking ahead.
What strikes me most about Poppy’s story is her ability to stay true to her roots, always focusing on the creative process while finding new ways to connect with customers and the world around her.
I can’t wait to see where her creative journey takes her next. Thank you for sharing your story with us, Poppy.
The Herbalists Bringing Nature’s Medicine Cabinet to Your Garden.
On finding a new way of living and keeping a craft alive.
and then