Meet the Designers

Fiona Drake

Hello - welcome to ekard.

Just to give you a bit of background history - the ladies in my family were all embroiderers, knitters and needlewomen of great enthusiasm, so I was taught to sew and embroider from an early age. As my Mum was also a keen amateur artist and wild flower enthusiast, I grew up with a love for flowers, painting and embroidery. The ideal career for me was a textile designer, creating floral embroideries for the greeting card and gift trade.

After gaining my honours degree at Nottingham Trent in Textile Design, I worked for the UK agents of an embroidery machine manufacturer, as designer, and later department manager. Whilst this gave me valuable technical experience, there was not enough outlet for my creativity, and I realised that in order to achieve that, I would have to find a way of starting my own business.

So, in 1986, after an amazing reaction to an embroidered Christmas Card I designed and made, I realised that there was a demand for high quality handmade cards. Drawing on the experience gained growing up in a thriving small business, in August 1986 I made the leap into the unknown, and decided to embark on my own, designing, making and marketing high quality greeting cards to the gift trade.

In order to produce the embroidery program, the digitising technique, which is very skilled, is equivalent to producing a hand-embroidery. Once the program is completed, we can produce the finished embroideries using state of the art embroidery machines.

Over the last 21 years Ekard (which you may have realised is my name spelt backwards!) has developed from a one-woman band, to employ up to 20 staff in a local community, and 8 agents selling and servicing trade accounts throughout the UK.

I am still actively involved in designing 2 or 3 ranges every year, and running the production and design side of the company, but now have the assistance of a young designer, Melissa, to bring a more contemporary feel to the ekard products.

Melissa Eadson

I graduated in 2004, also from Nottingham Trent University, gaining a degree with honours in Textile Design. I specialised in Printed Textiles, and enjoyed exploring the cross-overs and relationships between printed and embroidered textiles.

I have a strong passion for three elements that are the foundation of my designs - COLOUR, PATTERN and TEXTURE. This led me to realise during my second year at University, that I wanted to design for Greetings Cards and work within the industry after graduation.

I wanted to work and design for a friendly, well-recognised and successful company, where I could create collections with a handmade, tactile and personal finish to them and apply contemporary colour palettes, modern and retro patterns and through a variety of different stitches, create texture.

I started working for Ekard within 4-6 weeks of graduating, and my first full collection, Satin Quarter - Everyday and Christmas Cards - was launched the following year with great success.

In 2006, we re-launched the bestselling range of Frame-a-Name childrens name cards with frames which was my second collection for Ekard. This has proved to be a winning combination - felt names and fresh designs giving the whole range a new lift.

January 2007 will see the launch of Sew Special, my third collection, bringing soft sparkle and texture of ribbons to this contemporary card range.

I feel lucky to have been able to design ranges so early in my career, and be involved in a vibrant UK design and manufacturing company.