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Windmill Curtain Room
My Professional Journey
My name is Justine Bennett and I have been sewing all my life and making curtains and soft furnishings professionally since the mid 80’s. Before starting Windmill Curtain Room I worked on many styles in my time from CMT work to frills and festoons to classic country house furnishings to museum quality drapes for castles and halls.
I have been stitching, creating and designing anything involving fabric since as early as I can remember. As a child I was making my own clothes, knitting, crocheting and crafting and making and selling Teddy bears and soft toys for Christmas money. I was always busy doing something. Eventually I went on to study crafts and art at degree level and was destined to have a career in a creative industry although a natural aptitude for sewing steered me into a temporary job one summer break and it became clear that my skills were best suited to becoming a professional sewer.
After leaving university I moved to a different part of my home county an opportunity arose working for an interior designer making all her soft furnishings. I was fortunate enough to be able to design my own workspace and was provided with a fully equipped workroom. I was pretty much left to my own devices to study techniques and learn how to produce some really complex and heavily embellished work, as was the fashion at the time.
One of the first jobs I ever did professionally. The first ever window display for the interior design showroom. Circa 1987
Meanwhile, back home my father was in the early stages of building up his household textiles business specialising in high end bedlinen and single needle quilted bedcovers. It was simply just a matter of time and natural progression for me to eventually join him to assist with the business. He sourced and installed a rare single needle Mammut quilting machine and developed the ‘Comforter’ quilt which we’d go on to produce thousands of for export right around the world.
Remarkably we don’t have any photographs at all of our Mammut machine but this is the same machine and the set up is very similar to how we had ours. …. Taking a quick pic of anything and everything with your mobile phone just wasn’t an option in the late eighties …. In fact we weren’t even to have mobile phones for a few more years yet!
We did, however, manage to save this picture of a high end comforter range we developed to compliment a collection of fabulous French bedlinen made from 100% cotton percale. This one was button quilted and trimmed with broderie anglaise. We ceated this little room set for photography at one end of our massive 10m long worktable.
The quilting business grew and we soon needed to move to larger premises, invest in another Mammut and employ a small army of sewers to satisfy demand. The custom made side grew as well and I set up my own interior design business to work alongside my father’s business. That was it. After a few short years of being an employee, at 22 I was now self employed and would remain that way forever more!
Left - Our larger factory showing both Mammut machines (one behind the other) with John & Gary producing some of the CMT work for export.
Below - The girls hard at it on the machines and cutting table and Linda, closest, helping me at the custom-made tables where we appear to be making up a fully quilted throw with a peach chintz frill.
To be continued....
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