Despite being known for her exquisitely intricate collages, it’s textiles, rather than paper, that have been the constant in Sarah Battle’s life. Her home, in the Pennine village of Diggle, is the 18th-century weaver’s cottage in which she grew up; the attic space that is now her paper-cutting studio once having housed the looms. Her first degree, meanwhile, was in Printed Textiles, and later she worked for Jenny Frean’s First Eleven Studio, creating furnishing fabrics for the likes of John Lewis, Liberty and Next.
But when the studio closed at the beginning of lockdown, Sarah knew the time
