Meet Maria Sigma TEXTILE DESIGNER

With her zero-waste designs and contemporary craftsmanship, Maria Sigma is creating beautiful woven textiles that feel right and relevant for 21st-century life

- JACKY PARKER

Tell us about your design background. As a child, I used to draw and paint a lot, and I particularly liked to use yarns and textile materials, but I hadn’t tried weaving until my first degree in textile conservation, where I came across different textile-making techniques. I then studied textile design and specialised in hand weaving at Chelsea College of Arts. I love weaving because it combines creativity, maths and incredible machinery (the loom).

Where do you find creative inspiration? Inspiration comes from many different places, it could be a location, a book, a song, a memory, a person, an artwork, a weaving technique, materials and fibres or nature. I grew up in Athens and draw inspiration from my Greek heritage, as well as the British landscape, which I particularly like because of its earthy colours and rich textures.