Trish Burr is a self taught embroiderer. She was born and raised in Zimbabwe. In 2004 she moved to the Western Cape in South Africa with her husband and their three children.

In 1995 whilst still living in Zimbabwe, she acquired the DMC agency for the country. This proved to be the start of her love affair with embroidery. Like so many others, she began with cross stitch, but an attraction to botanical art soon led her to explore the possibilities of needle painting. This resulted in the completion of her first book, “Redoute’s Finest Flowers in Embroidery” published by Sally Milner in Australia. She has subsequently published two further books on needle painting and one on cross stitch. She teaches and gives talks at workshops and guilds in South Africa, and contributes internationally to needlework magazines and other publications.

Her projects are mainly floral but she has recently expanded her work to include birds and portraits, devising means to include minute details in her subjects. Her emphasis on light and shadow brings her embroidery alive and her artistic use of colour further enhances the three dimensional effects in her work.

Trish is recognized for her unique style of long and short stitch embroidery. She has spent many years researching this technique and willingly shares this knowledge with fellow embroiderers. To quote in her own words:

“We need to keep hand embroidery alive, but if we hug our ideas to ourselves, they will become lost and worthless in the future. If I give you a gift, I no longer have it, you do. However, if I give you an idea then we both have it, and if you share this idea with others then we have multiplied it, expanded on it and watch it grow.”