Rebekah Johnston - Textile Artist
A dream personal branding shoot with Textile Artist - Rebekah Johnston
Some shoots just light you up from the inside out - and my branding photography session with Rebekah was one of those days.
From our very first call, I had a feeling she was my kind of person. Warm, thoughtful, and deeply creative. But stepping into her studio at the Old Knows Factory in Nottingham confirmed it. Surrounded by piles of fabric, textures, colours, and sunlight streaming across her work, I knew this shoot was going to be hella special.
Rebekah is a textile artist and educator, creating one-off quilted textiles that explore emotional wellbeing. Each piece is stitched by hand in a mindful, meditative process, the kind of slow art that feels like the antidote to our crazy fast-paced world.
In her own words, “Nature shows up in my work in many ways: in soft shapes echoing light through branches or drifting clouds, in stitched lines that recall horizons, sea journeys, and walks on land abroad, and in fabrics coloured directly by the natural world such as sumac, onion skin, and aldercones. At times there feels no separation between art, artist, and nature itself.”
Her studio itself reflects that same rhythm and flow. Fabric offcuts wait to be transformed, threads gather in little nests, and her ideas spill freely across sketchbooks and walls. As she describes it, “My sketchbook has no fixed spine. It spills onto the wall, where ideas can breathe, rearrange, and spark new connections. Pages move between book and wall, shifting shape as I work - cut, layered, pinned, and unpinned. This evolving collage grows organically, a constant source of curiosity and inspiration.”
Rebekah’s journey also struck me. Five years ago, she stepped away from a career as a secondary school art teacher to pursue her own practice. Since then, she’s built a creative life around studio work, workshops, and community projects.
As a photographer, shoots like this are what I live for. It wasn’t just about creating portraits, but about capturing a feeling: the quiet joy of making, the connection between artist and material, and the way Rebekah’s work seems to carry nature and mindfulness within every stitch.
I honestly feel so lucky to meet and photograph humans like her, ridiculously talented, but also generous, grounded, and kind.
Rather than me gushing on (because I absolutely could), I’ll let the photos do the talking…
If you’d like to see more of Rebekah’s beautiful work (and maybe even join one of her workshops), you can find her over at https://www.instagram.com/rebekah_handmade/ or https://www.rebekahjohnston.co.uk/
