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Ep 1: Light and Lace with Sara Robertson
474 Plays1 year ago
Sara Robertson is a smart textile maker and researcher who has been exploring different ways to translate concepts of change and movement in nature through her beautiful textile creation over the last 20 years.
Join me as I speak with Sara about her journey from a young artist to a leading smart textiles researcher. Learn about how she is making lace with light - these are absolutely exquisite textiles, and what has influenced her creative process. Find out her plans for the future and what it takes to be a researcher at the cutting edge of the industry.
Connect with Sara Robertson and check out her latest work:
www.smarttextile.design
Insta: @smarttextiledesign
Twitter: @saraplussarah
Connect with Mili Tharakan:
Insta: @noordinarycloth
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Transcript
Introduction to 'No Ordinary Cloth' and Guest
00:00:03
Speaker
Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of No Ordinary Cloth, where we talk about all things textiles. I'm your host Millie, and in this episode I'm thrilled to be speaking with Sarah Robertson, a fellow smart textiler and friend. We met at the e-textile summer camp in France in 2015. Her warm nature and curiosity about materials drew me to her immediately.
00:00:26
Speaker
Sarah is passionate about textiles and is a researcher at heart.
Sarah Robertson's Academic Journey
00:00:31
Speaker
She completed her PhD at Harriet Watt University where she investigated the design potential of thermochromic textiles with electronic heating. She then went on to research lacemaking with fiber optics and we will hear more about that today so stay with us. She has worked in academia for the last 20 years so she really is an expert in the field.
00:00:52
Speaker
She was a tutor at the Royal College of Arts MA Textile Program from 2017 and has now stepped out to run her own business, Sarah and Sarah. So let's dive in and hear more about Sarah's journey into the world of smart textiles.
00:01:11
Speaker
Sarah, it is such a pleasure to have you here. I'm so excited to hear your story. Before we dive into the big questions about textiles in your career and the incredible journey you've had, especially with smart textiles, I wanted to start with just getting to know you a little bit. So where are you from? Where did you grow up? Where did you go to school?
Sarah's Early Life and Interests
00:01:32
Speaker
If you're brave enough to tell us your favorite band when you were a teenager,
00:01:38
Speaker
I am from Southampton in the UK and I grew up in I suppose in and around that area and lived in Botley with my mum and dad and so I went to a local school in Botley. I had horses while I had two in my sort of young childhood so
00:02:02
Speaker
I learnt to ride and then I had a horse and then I ended up getting another horse so that was part of my kind of early life and I really wanted to be a riding instructor at that point and this was between 9 and maybe 14. I spent a lot of my time at the stables rather than focusing on school although I did okay at school.
00:02:23
Speaker
I had a very musical influence in my kind of early growing up years because my mum and dad were really into music so we had an eclectic mix of music in our house so I can't pinpoint a favourite band but from that time it was kind of like the pretenders, the eurythmics, all of that type of stuff going on in our household and my brother is now a music producer so
00:02:49
Speaker
it obviously influenced him as well. Amazing, oh lovely. That's so fascinating that you were, you were a riding instructor. What were the names of your horses if I could ask? I had a horse called Fleur who was a Welsh cob and then a horse called JJ who was an Arab cross-quarter horse. Wow. She was completely crazy and almost killed me a few times.
00:03:16
Speaker
So yeah, I was dicing with death at that early point.
Discovering Textile Design
00:03:21
Speaker
So what point did that shift from wanting to be a writing instructor to starting to get interested in textiles? That seems like a totally different world.
00:03:31
Speaker
It was I suppose it was a massive leap but I was always really creative and so I was really into art and I did art at GCSE and ceramics but I didn't understand textile design at that point as something you could do as a separate
00:03:48
Speaker
discipline or specialism so I just followed that kind of creative track through school and then went on to college and did art and art history and so that kind of shaped those early years which were intermixed with also this other kind of side of my life which was about horses and stables and I think what in a way they kind of influenced each other in a way because I was outdoors all of the time
00:04:16
Speaker
I was really inspired by nature and the changing seasons and I also had a lot of independence and freedom at that early point in my life. And I think those things allowed me to feel confident about taking a direction that was maybe more creative, needed more motivation, self-motivation.
00:04:36
Speaker
to keep it going and move it forward. And it was only really after I left college and I went on to do a foundation in art and design at the University of Portsmouth that I found textile design and that's I think it was one of my tutors on the foundation course that said oh well you know there is
00:04:56
Speaker
There are courses in textile design that you can do. You know, I had no understanding of that at the time. So I just started to look for university degrees that were doing textile design and that's where my journey started. So I suppose it came into my psyche in the foundation year. Yeah, that was one of my questions actually. Was there someone who inspired you and sort of pointed you down this road? One of my tutors on my foundation course was Louise Lamburn. She was a very
00:05:26
Speaker
just a very sort of inspiring person to be around. Yeah, and I think there was another really interesting tutor who was a fashion illustrator. Her illustrations were absolutely beautiful and I just remember being fascinated by her interpretation and her depiction of textiles in these illustrations.
00:05:51
Speaker
And they're kind of, I suppose, the beauty of cloth. And yeah, I think those were the kind of early moments for me where I thought, oh, there's something in this. I don't know where it'll lead me, but maybe this is the right direction for me. Like you said, textiles is much more than just something that's functional that we wear and use. It's, you know, apart from the materiality of textiles, there's this immateriality, this quality that draws us to it and really speaks to our souls, I think.
00:06:18
Speaker
Is there a piece of fabric or an item of clothing that holds some very personal memories for you or is very valuable to you? And if you could share about that.
00:06:28
Speaker
I think there are a few things that sort of spring to mind, although maybe not what you might associate with like a traditional piece of clothing or a piece of cloth. I had a sewing box that has been sort of handed down through the family and on the inside of the sewing box there's like this pin cushion kind of piece of cloth and it's got like needles and pins from that have been used over the years and
00:06:58
Speaker
threads and that holds significant memory because it's just a kind of box of memories in terms of repair of cloth, making of clothing, the way that the sewing box is put together with textiles is really interesting, you know it's padded, it's quilted, it's functional. Yeah I think it's got lots of really interesting qualities and also reminds me of the fact that most of the women and actually men in our family have sewn
00:07:26
Speaker
in some way amended and fixed things. Oh, that's beautiful. It's got so many layers of meaning as well in it. I love that. So now I think we will sort of jump into your world of smart textiles. And the first question would be, how did you first come across smart textiles and what drew you to it? What made you curious and what got you hooked that you then spend the rest of your life working in this area?
Exploration of Smart Textiles
00:07:54
Speaker
It's a difficult question in a way because I think when I first came across smart textiles, it wasn't smart textiles in a way or wasn't known as smart textiles or I didn't know those smart textiles. So I think probably the journey started 2004 and I started an MA in textiles at Winchester School of Art
00:08:22
Speaker
And it was during that time, it was during that time that I really started to explore textiles that could transform in its environment or textiles that would change over time, that would reflect nature to some extent. So we might be able to have surfaces in our interiors that would change color or respond in some way to their surroundings.
00:08:50
Speaker
And I think that's probably where it started for me, but I didn't really know exactly what it was called. But I started to explore at that point smart materials in their application to textiles through print.
00:09:04
Speaker
that became a real focus of my work. So researching how I could use thermochromic materials that would respond in reaction to temperature and then potentially how I might control those color changes on the textile surfaces. I suppose it was that bit in essence that sort of led me to this area of smart textiles. So this idea of being able to program or potentially control
00:09:31
Speaker
changes in a textile surface. So I was looking at integrating electronics in 2004 into textiles or onto textiles in order to kind of explore these kind of dynamic color changes or transitional color changes. But I didn't have a way of really expressing the area of research I was in at that point.
00:09:57
Speaker
And then you went on to sort of do that as your PhD. Yeah, that's what led me to the PhD. Yeah. And I was really lucky at the time. So I got to do my MA. I was funded, I think I can't remember exactly what the funding was called, but it was like a professional kind of practice fund, which allowed you to do your MA and they paid the fees.
00:10:18
Speaker
And then I applied for funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to do a PhD in the area of, I suppose, still exploring thermochromics and their application to textiles. And I was awarded that funding, which allowed me then to do the PhD. And so that took me to Scotland.
00:10:37
Speaker
As you know, the name of the podcast is No Ordinary Cloth. And the reason I was so keen to chat with you and find out more about your work is because I think what you've been creating for the last 10, 15 years is definitely No Ordinary Cloth. I think you've been making some exquisite light emitting lace fabrics and all sorts of other interesting things, which you wouldn't define as regular textiles, just
00:11:00
Speaker
Tell us a bit more about how you got started in this area and how slowly things like light and electronics, maybe even data, became part of that toolbox of yours as a textile maker. Yeah. So this way of working started through my PhD research because I had a really unusual supervisory team. So I had a colour chemist, Bob Christie, at the time.
00:11:26
Speaker
at Harriet Watt University School of Textiles and Design in the Scottish Borders and Sarah Taylor who was kind of a pioneer in fibre optic technology for textiles. So they were my supervisors and then
00:11:43
Speaker
through my PhD, I was looking at how you could mix color live on a textile surface using smart materials and really exploring the layering of smart materials to create new colors that those materials could move through. And through the experience of my PhD, I became really good friends with Sarah Taylor, who was my supervisor.
00:12:08
Speaker
and we now run a business together. I suppose over the years, from 2006 when I started my PhD to now, just the extent of the projects that I've been involved in have always involved handcraft techniques, so really
00:12:25
Speaker
understanding of the materials and understanding of the textile processes are at the heart of those techniques but then pushing those processes into these other disciplinary areas so combining them potentially with electronics and programming and computational technology and then also combining unusual materials
00:12:49
Speaker
into textile processes or really exploiting the properties of unusual materials within those processes to create new aesthetics, new structures, new material properties that offer these kind of additional qualities, I suppose, such as light and colour change.
00:13:11
Speaker
and these transitional time-based effects which are able to shift or be programmed or change over time. And that toolbox now is quite complicated to describe in a way, but it involves collaboration almost always, working between maybe more academic research and then with industry as well to move things forward.
00:13:41
Speaker
working across different sectors and working across different disciplines. And so we're always shifting, I suppose, in terms of where we need to gain further expertise or where we need to bring other people in to make things happen. Actually, that brings us perfectly to the next question, which is, you trained as a textile maker, but they don't teach you electronics, they don't teach you computing when you're studying.
00:14:08
Speaker
So how much have you had to train yourself, teach yourself, and then also, like you said, bring people in with expertise as well? Yeah, there is a big balance there. So sometimes some of the things we want to achieve are definitely beyond our skill set. And then it is sometimes hard to understand how you communicate what you need.
00:14:33
Speaker
or what you want to do. But I think I train, I started to train myself really early in the, even started in the MA, I suppose, where I often would send random emails to people in universities in electronics and computing departments and say, I really need to know about this technology. Could I come and see you? Can we discuss whether you think this has potential and textile design? And I ended up as well having support of
00:15:00
Speaker
Vosper Thornecroft, the shipbuilders, in Portsmouth at the time because I wanted to cut metal and you couldn't do it with a laser cutter which they had as part of the textile facility at Winchester School of Art so I had to go outside and I didn't really know where to go at the time so I ended up getting in touch with Vosper Thornecroft and then they were so helpful and I had circuits cut for me at the shipbuilders so I would
00:15:27
Speaker
find ways of learning how to do things, but probably in a really long winded way to begin with. But then that really gave me this kind of grounding of knowledge of how to design a circuit, program a circuit. So I just say that I have basic circuit design tips.
00:15:45
Speaker
expertise, but that circuit design expertise is from making the circuits myself from scratch and really making them with materials and thinking about how they could be softer, thinking about how they could be more flexible, thinking about how they would work with textiles.
00:16:02
Speaker
So in a way it was part of my making process and part of a means to an end of getting the effects I wanted. So I wouldn't be able to sketch a circuit in a professional way, but I'd be able to draw what I wanted it to look like. And like you said, it's about communicating what you want done,
Importance of Collaboration in Textiles
00:16:21
Speaker
isn't it? And if you're able to do that, then you can bring the right people in.
00:16:24
Speaker
I mean, I absolutely love that you're just not scared to go to people who aren't sort of in your comfort zone. You sort of reach out wherever you need to and get what you need. And I think that's definitely sort of sets you and people like you apart in trying to push the boundaries of an industry. You have to sort of be out there in the dark by yourself almost and knock on a hundred doors and hope one of them open.
00:16:48
Speaker
That takes a lot of courage actually, Sarah. Maybe training on the horse has given you a lot more than maybe what you've sort of realized for your career as well. Yeah, I think so. You know, you could be right. I think those early years probably have a lot more influence on me than I realized. To be less afraid and
00:17:05
Speaker
Yeah. And to fail and fall off and get back on. I love that. That's perfect. That's it. I know you've done work with various different types of smart materials, but specifically with fiber optics, how has that evolved in terms of your techniques, figuring out new techniques and methods for developing textiles with fiber optics?
The 'Digital Lace' Project
00:17:26
Speaker
Yeah. The first sort of step in that for Sarah and I was when
00:17:32
Speaker
I finished my PhD and had kind of come out the other side. We stayed friends, but we'd never really worked together before. So eventually, I think it was around 2014, we had an opportunity. We applied for a tiny bit of funding. We had an opportunity to work together on a project which ended up being called Digital Lace, where we were exploring bringing my print skills and her
00:17:56
Speaker
weave expertise together and sort of looking at this kind of clash of technologies and processes. So we brought together liquid crystal thermochromic materials alongside the optical fiber in one piece that would
00:18:12
Speaker
shift in colour and light. And it was inspired by the archive lace collections at the National Museum of Scotland. So we reinterpreted a lace sampler through our kind of respective processes. That was really the start of
00:18:28
Speaker
us working together with optical fibre as well. Through that project by chance we ended up being in touch with MYB textiles who are a Scottish lace manufacturer in Ayrshire and we ended up working with them for many years. I mean we still work with them, maybe not as
00:18:46
Speaker
in such a concentrated way at the moment, but we then worked with them on feasibility projects about how we could develop large-scale light-emitting lace within their kind of heritage manufacturing setup. So weaving the optical fibers on their Nottingham lace looms and on their more modern Jacquard Scottish madras looms.
00:19:08
Speaker
And so that project really then started to kind of feed our knowledge and expertise and also MIB textiles knowledge and expertise of developing light emitting materials and how we could weave light emitting patterns within a lace woven structure. So the way that the optical fiber is manipulated in the weave structure creates the shadow and light effects
00:19:35
Speaker
And yeah, I think from now that project continues, but it sort of stops and starts as we get more knowledge or we suddenly need to develop something that is more specific to light emitting cloths. At the moment, the project is at a point where the lighting devices are not necessarily appropriate for light emitting cloths. So we have developed bespoke lighting devices to light the selvage edge of the cloth, but they're still
00:20:05
Speaker
not quite right. And so we have a challenge of balancing the kind of industrial design or the luminaire design with the cloth. And so to move it forward now needs a kind of another round of research and development in a way. So our knowledge continues to develop. You're in fact sort of creating a new craft in itself, isn't it?
00:20:27
Speaker
by when you're bringing new materials into a space, you have to make new tools and new processes and methods. And that's what you and Sarah have been sort of doing over the last decade to really work out how this could be made in larger scales going beyond just prototypes.
00:20:45
Speaker
Yeah and I think that is, that presents a whole range of challenges because you're starting from really from scratch as soon as you start to move that smaller scale craft based making knowledge into this industrial space. Immediately you have so many different challenges and also
00:21:05
Speaker
the aspect of understanding where this product might fit, so how to make it, how to design with the people that might use it at the end. So you're making a meaningful product or a meaningful service or a meaningful piece of cloth. How would you say these new kinds of fabrics, fabrics that change with light or with heat, that's alive and active?
00:21:31
Speaker
How does that change the meaning and the function of textiles as we know it?
Performance and Flexibility of Smart Textiles
00:21:38
Speaker
I suppose for Sarah and I, it's been about the ability to offer a different way of seeing textiles. So not only is it a beautiful piece of cloth, so in certain environments or in certain lighting
00:21:54
Speaker
it's a beautiful piece of lace that could be used in a very traditional way but it also offers another dimension so it offers the ability for it to be an illuminated surface which brings a different ambience at a different time of day or within a different professional environment. It's multifunctional, it's multi-sensory and they have the ability to
00:22:17
Speaker
perform in these different ways but they're still soft, flexible like foldable materials which offer the same qualities as a traditional textile but offer the ability to be used in a number of different ways, in a number of different environments.
00:22:33
Speaker
And one of the qualities I suppose of optical fiber is that it's this, you know, it doesn't heat up. It's a safe carrier of light that can rest against the body. There's no electricity passing through it. It carries light from one place to another or it carries data from one place to another. So essentially you're creating these surfaces with large-scale non-heating ability to carry light in different ways. And I suppose with the dynamic
00:23:01
Speaker
kind of colour changing surfaces. I think one of the reasons that I initially started to explore that area of research around smart materials was to think about the way that nature changes and transforms itself and if we can start to have surfaces that mimic nature and maybe are less permanent, potentially we can think about designing colour
00:23:26
Speaker
and surfaces in different ways. They might not last forever. They might degrade. They might offer slightly different properties in terms of being able to signal when things are changing in your environment, for example, your heating, your light levels, the humidity, the air quality. What else do these surfaces allow us to do without always having to look at a computer screen? They offer a different form of technology, I suppose.
00:23:53
Speaker
And I always think of it as a more feminine version of technology. Right. How did our existing design of technology happen?
00:24:01
Speaker
how could that look very different, completely different? And there's been so many pioneers in that area where it feels like they've got to a certain stage and then it's sort of stopped because no one quite knows what to do with these types of technology or they're ahead of their time or they are the technology that we need to really make them work doesn't quite exist yet, the science isn't quite there. But maybe all of that starts to come together and shift and we see a different future for these, you know,
00:24:30
Speaker
different types of beautiful technological surfaces. Lovely. I was wondering what your creative process looks like. What are the phases you go through and how do you navigate the uncertainties or ambiguity of this process?
00:24:47
Speaker
My creative process now is quite different for different projects but I mean part of my creative process I suppose is reading, writing notes and that's just come through I suppose being a researcher and a lot of my starting points are sometimes written more than visual so that might be a section of a research paper or a quote or you know something in an article or there's just
00:25:14
Speaker
various things that I might pull on to start something off but then there is a massive visual side as well so often inspired by archive materials, existing textile designs, existing textile processes and actually working in a very hands-on kind of live way with materials so really learning through the materials and how we're putting them together and then looking at the samples reflecting on those and
00:25:42
Speaker
seeing what we could change or improve on in that process. So it really is through the materials themselves, sort of speaking, that we're able to move on to the next step. And that is often because there's a kind of part of that textile that you can't see initially. So with the light emission from a textile, once that cloths come off the loom, it's non-lit. You can't see what it eventually looks like until you've
00:26:10
Speaker
lit it up in a you know a semi-darkened environment. So you're always getting these kind of hidden cues from the fabric which you didn't know were there until you revealed them but then through that process of kind of iterating, sampling, looking at the cloth, doing the light emission test you then generate
00:26:29
Speaker
a kind of knowledge I suppose of what will work, how you can improve on that and that process is really a textile, I would say a textile design process or one that comes as a kind of familiar textile design process. The designs we do have been over the years very much inspired by archive material, so from lace archives to the MYB
00:26:53
Speaker
archives they have there and we haven't kind of deviated much from that but some of the designs that we were able to achieve within the lighter mitting lace from the archive material were scaled up or manipulated in a certain way that they look very contemporary and very modern and not like lace in a traditional sense.
00:27:14
Speaker
When you started off in this area, guessing there was no clear pathway for Smart Textiles, looking back, could you reflect a bit on this journey and how you got here? What was your North Star? What kept you going?
00:27:29
Speaker
I don't know. It's funny, isn't it? Because I think I was... I essentially just stayed in education. I wanted to be an academic. I wanted to teach and I wanted to continue to have a research career in academia. So that was kind of my North Star and I just kind of was motivated to do that and I just moved through that process.
00:27:51
Speaker
My North Star maybe was the love of textile design and this new area of emerging textile design that kind of kept me motivated and kept me excited about what was possible. It is that quest, isn't it? What is possible? Being sort of a trailblazer in your industry, an innovator, working with new materials,
00:28:15
Speaker
What are some of the challenges that you might have faced or some difficult times that you've had to wade through?
00:28:23
Speaker
you know, you know, I've just said obviously that I imagine myself as an academic and then being in academia is very different to sort of the outside perception maybe of being an academic. And so being within academia, I probably very quickly realized actually that I found it difficult to be in an academic environment because
00:28:48
Speaker
I had a lot of ideas all of the time and I wanted to push things forward quite quickly and everything works quite slowly. You know to apply for funding you have to spend a long time crafting that funding application and then you have to spend a long time having it reviewed and peer reviewed to gain that funding and I think
00:29:09
Speaker
I quickly understood that this space for me was a tricky one and I maybe sat outside academia as much as I did in. And so the challenge for me was how could I find a space where I could balance this almost entrepreneurship or
00:29:29
Speaker
ideas that were more, that sat maybe more outside of traditional academic research but still be an academic researcher and I think that I've never quite found that balance and so actually now I may
00:29:44
Speaker
a big decision to leave my academic role and to work and concentrate on mine and Sarah's business. But I still don't know whether that's the right thing for me. I don't know if I'm going to miss this big part of my life, which was more in academia or not. Or maybe this will be the start of something very new. So the challenge has been finding this balance between these two spaces.
00:30:08
Speaker
and how we could get that to work. And I think in the end I've decided I couldn't get it to work. Right, so you had to sort of almost make a choice here and try something different altogether.
00:30:18
Speaker
You had briefly touched upon your new adventure that you're setting off on.
Research-Led Innovation in Textiles
00:30:23
Speaker
You set up a business with your business partner, Sarah, with an H, Sarah Taylor. And like you said, you've known each other for years. You've set up this business, I think in 2018, and now you're really diving in full time trying to get this off the ground, which I think I'm super excited about.
00:30:40
Speaker
So could you tell us a bit more about your business itself? What services do you offer? What kind of clients do you work with? I mean, this is your turn to promote your business. So go for it.
00:30:51
Speaker
Well I think our business and practice is kind of born out of academic research so we really are a research-led business. We are developing programmable, adaptable surfaces for often interior environments, theatre environments and exploring these qualities of textiles through moving maybe craft
00:31:13
Speaker
techniques and processes into maybe a more industrial setting. And I'm really pushing and exploiting those properties within larger scale manufacture. So our projects have been in collaboration with other companies and other people and very kind of self led projects up until now. But in the future, we hope to offer maybe potentially a product line of our own, but we're not entirely sure.
00:31:43
Speaker
what that will look like because it is really early days for us and we almost need to have this concentrated time now or I need to have this concentrated time now to really see what we can do.
00:31:59
Speaker
in this space and how we become a business that can offer research, products, and consultancy services, so research and development for other companies within this space. And we're tiny at the moment, so we have capacity to do very concentrated and unique projects
00:32:20
Speaker
So it's about choosing really wisely and really carefully about what we do. And very recently we've been working on our Wirth partnership funded project, which is funded by a big EU program to help creative industries. And you work in partnership with someone in Europe and you get mentorship and business support through the program as well. And we worked with a company called Threads who are Paris based.
00:32:49
Speaker
NGO design studio and we have been developing mycelium and smart textile toys, children's toys and they were launched at Milan Design Week recently and that's an ongoing project so that's something that we feel very passionate about and it's been very much about testing and trialing how we could grow mycelium on the smart textiles how everything could be integrated within a mycelium object
00:33:15
Speaker
Yeah so it's still ongoing and very interesting for us and something that we see as potentially being another business that could kind of come out of Sarah and Sarah. Yeah and then we also work with an Italian luxury sportswear brand working on kind of novel colour finishes, new colour, new ways of designing colour for apparel and that's our main our main work at the moment so
00:33:39
Speaker
But what that gives us is a way of really drawing on our knowledge and expertise that we've developed over the years and really seeing the results move into reality through product, which is a really exciting point to be at for us.
00:33:57
Speaker
to see it shift from research into a product, into the world. Yeah, exciting.
Where to Find More About Sarah's Work
00:34:03
Speaker
Well, I'll definitely be keeping a close eye. Actually, I'd love to make sure that people know where to find you online. So if you want to just give a shout out to your website, your social media details for more information.
00:34:14
Speaker
So our website is www.smarttextile.design and our social media, Instagram is at Smart Textile Design. Well, thank you, Sarah. Really. Thank you. Really appreciate the journey. I really felt like I went on a journey with you from this nine year old girl who was riding a horse all the way to this new business that you're setting up and taking off the ground. Your story is definitely inspiring. It shows that one thing you need is courage.
00:34:41
Speaker
to step out and go into the unknown and find answers and to keep digging deeper. I will put all your details in the show notes below so that everyone knows how to get in touch with you. Thank you. Amazing. Thank you. This brings us to the end of this episode and I hope you've enjoyed listening to Sarah's story as much as I have. Please do check out Sarah's website smarttextile.design to see her exquisite light emitting lace fabrics as well as other projects that she's been working on.
00:35:10
Speaker
I love that her early days as a young horse rider being out in nature, enjoying the changes in season and the freedom she had to find her own way continue to inspire her work and her approach to research. To be someone at the forefront of an industry like Sarah, you really do need that courage to go out there into the unknown and try things. And when you fall off the horse, both literally and metaphorically, you get back on and try again. Such an inspiring message for all of us. Thank you, Sarah, for that.
00:35:40
Speaker
You can find links to Sarah's company and social media in the show notes, so definitely check that out and reach out to Sarah.
00:35:48
Speaker
And thank you for joining us and please be sure to subscribe to this podcast to hear more fascinating stories about the amazing people making some extraordinary textiles. Follow us on social media and please leave us a review. We would absolutely love to hear your thoughts and feedback. You can contact me, Millie, at MillieTharakin.com. I will put that email in the notes as well below. You can also leave comments on our YouTube channel, No Ordinary Cloth. It would mean a lot to me to hear from you.
00:36:17
Speaker
But for now, saying goodbye, this is your host, Millie Parrokin.