Met her at a craft fair in Rye. Folding table, a stack of neatly pressed linen bags in undyed and soft earthy tones, and a hand-written sign that just said "Linen goods, made locally." Twelve products on the table. Nothing more, nothing less.
She's been sewing linen bags since 1994. Started making them for her own kitchen, started selling them at a village fete because a friend told her to, and thirty-odd years later she's still doing the same craft fair circuit around East Sussex most weekends through spring and summer. She said she could probably count on one hand the number of times she's changed the pattern.
This is the thing about independent makers that gets lost when you're buying something mass-produced. There's no story behind a bag from a big shop. There's a whole one behind a bag made by someone who's been doing exactly this, at exactly this kind of stall, for three decades. You're not just buying linen. You're buying the fact that someone got good at one thing and kept doing it.
I bought a small drawstring pouch, the kind of thing that'll end up holding hairpins or spare change or nothing in particular. It cost £6. It'll outlast most things I own that cost considerably more.
If you're at a craft fair or independent market this summer, the stalls worth stopping at are rarely the loudest ones. They're the ones with a handwritten sign and someone who can tell you exactly how something was made, because they made it.
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