A designer who first took up knitting with her granny as she struggled at school went on to create her own fashion line. And last month her work appeared as part of an advertisement spread in Vogue.
Madeleine Hann was having a ''rough time'' in class as she struggled to find anything at school she excelled in. It was during this time her grandmother Susanne Hann taught her to knit.
By 2021, she had graduated from a fashion knitwear course at Nottingham Trent University. Now aged 22, Maddy is running her own knitwear brand Edith Knitwear from her home.
Maddy named the brand after her great-grandmother Edith and has collections named after her two grandmothers, Betty and Susie. And she was delighted to be approached by the world renowned magazine to be featured on its pages.
"I got an email whilst I was at work from them saying they had found my Instagram and thought I'd be suited to do an advertisement," she said. "I didn't think it was real."
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She continued: "I ran to my sister to and asked her to read it and asked my friend who works in magazines to check if it was real. I had to pay a fee to be featured, but you have to be invited to do so and I looked at it as an investment. Vogue doesn't have a shelf life, it's something I could show to my children one day."
Maddy, of Mark, Somerset, now wants to encourage children to follow their creative passions regardless of academic knockbacks. She said: "I was a child at school who academically did not achieve, and if you weren't academic it was more the other children who would pick up on it.
"Intelligence can be different in so many ways, and just because you're creatively intelligent doesn't make it any less important. I remember feeling like my life was over on GCSE results day, I didn't think I'd get into sixth-form never mind university."
She still doesn't have a maths GCSE, despite taking the exam four times, but says she "has no problem in measuring and tailoring". "I can do maths, just not on a piece of paper in an exam," she said.
"I'm not saying that maths and stuff isn't important, but I think there's still too much emphasis on academic achievements. Really, the most important thing you learn from school is your work ethic and we should be teaching kids that as long as you're working hard and trying your best, that's what's important."
As well as running her business, Maddy also works for her dad at his snack company. She hopes Edith Knitwear will become her main source of income one day, and wants the business to be the 'go-to' brand for knitwear.
She said: "With gymwear people know to go to Sweaty Betty and with shoes they know to go to Clarks, but no one knows where to go for knitwear. I don't want to follow a trend, I want my pieces to be a sustainable investment that can transform an outfit.
"People associate knitting with older people, like grandmas sitting on a sofa with their knitting needles, but it's so much more than that - knitting is in everything around us. What I find amazing about knitting is that you start off with just a cone of yarn, and then to see that to the outcome - I find that transition incredible. It's so cool once you physically see it all come together.
