Herma has always loved creating with fabric. She was lucky enough to have a mother who loved dress making so there were always scraps of fabric to work with. When she was nine she got her first sewing machine, a Singer hand crank sewing machine, the best Christmas present ever. Herma made clothes for her dolls, herself and later her children. When she wasn’t sewing, she was knitting, embroidering or spinning.
Through her children Herma discovered the joy of working in Early Childhood Education and when the youngest was off to school she went back to school herself: teacher training college. Her love of all things textile followed her there and she wrote her thesis on the endless possibilities of textile materials in Early Childhood Education. After teaching children for a while, Herma went back to the teacher training college, this time as a teacher.
Another change in her life took Herma to Italy, to a little village in the province of Prato and work in a small chemical company (surrounded by the Prato textile industry). The enormous choice and availability of knitting yarns there, started her knitting again. After a while (there being a limit to the amount of sweaters that fit in a closet) she started looking around for something else to keep her hands busy and her soul happy and so she (re)discovered quilting. After going it alone for a while Herma finally found the courage to enroll in one of the on-line courses of the Design Matters team. She hasn’t looked back since.
Herma cannot imagine a life in which creating with fabric does not play an important part. She loves making things and loves sharing what she does with others.
During the first lockdown in 2020, Herma started making her signature ‘Going round in circles’ pieces.
These pieces can stand on their own or be used to build bigger work such as boxes, wall hangings, bags, wearables, etc.
Her work has attracted attention and followers from all over the world. She currently runs a Facebook group with almost 7000 members and shares her work through Facebook, Instagram and YouTube. Herma exhibits her work both nationally and internationally.
Herma lives and works in the Netherlands.
About the name of the website: Pezzettino is a beautiful book by Leo Leonni about a little piece (pezzettino in Italian) who thinks he must be part of something bigger because all his friends are made of many pieces. Herma used this book in her very first ‘creating with fabric’ lesson for four and five year-olds and thinks it’s a perfect title for a website dedicated to using little pieces to make something bigger.
Herma de Ruiter
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