A former art teacher who has spent 55 years meticulously creating embroidered pictures is collecting her favourite pieces from the decades for a final exhibition.

Jennifer Meakin, of Birch Drive in Attleborough, began hand-sewing the works of art when she was just 20 and training to be an art teacher and has since put on dozens of shows.

Now 75, and with 25 years as an art teacher at Attleborough Academy behind her, Mrs Meakin is planning for her art's final outing - and she hopes she will 'go out with a bang'.

'Well I'm 75, and I'm knocking on a bit now,' she said. 'I don't feel that I'll have the energy to put on a big show again, so I've been working on this since last autumn and hopefully it will make an interesting exhibition.'

Creating the embroidered pictures is no quick job - it sees Mrs Meakin pore over piles of vibrant fabrics and piece them together, hand-sewing them together piece by piece.

The show, which will be held at Wymondham Arts Centre, will feature just a handful of her stunning pictures, which cover a wealth of subject matter, from flowers and birds to Egyptian themes and animals - with a couple of dragons thrown in for good measure.

She said: 'That's one of my favourite things, working with different subject matter - I like to cover as much as i can. All of the work is hand-sewn too - most modern embroidery is done with a sewing machine but I have always preferred to hand sew mine. It's just fabrics, thread and sewn down by hand.'

The exhibition will cover the development of her work from the 1960s to present day, including newspaper cuttings, albums and work sewn for Rowntree Mackintosh and Norwich Union.

Although she said she has dabbled in other media, Mrs Meakin, who estimates that she has exhibited about 960 pictures, said the draw of working with fabrics keeps pulling her back.

'I just love using all different materials and putting them together. I think it creates quite an unusual feel and I have always really enjoyed it,' she said.

The show will run at the arts centre, on Church Street, from July 28 to August 9, from 10am to 5pm through the week on Saturdays and from 12pm to 5pm on Sundays.

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