Elyn Middleton

Elyn makes quilts in her living room in Sheffield. "I work in my living room, so having a workshop would be a luxury," she says. She would like to stop packing everything away at the end of each day.

The Bauhaus textile rooms

She makes patchwork bed quilts and smaller quilted wall hangings. She pieces the tops on a machine, quilts the layers by hand and finishes the binding by hand. The patterns are geometric, mostly blocks, stripes and checkerboards, in natural linen and warm cottons.

Her influences are the Bauhaus textile artists: Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Anni Albers and Gunta Stölzl. She calls them "pioneering textile artists who pushed age-old craft into a new era and really knew their way around a complex geometric pattern."

Modernist and post-war buildings

Architecture is the other influence. "Usually, but not exclusively, Modernist and post-war buildings," she says. "I find the sculptural forms fascinating as a whole, but it's the little details that get me. Decorative patterns, material textures, the quality of light."

Her quilts are made to be used and washed rather than kept for best. Elyn believes beautiful objects belong in everyday life.