At 63, I bought a basket made by a 71-year-old woman in Yorkshire and five friends asked me where I got it

I have never written anything like this before, and I very nearly didn't. It is a basket, of all things. But five different friends have now asked me about it, so it seemed easier to just tell everyone at once.

For my whole adult life, the storage basket was the same sort of thing. A saggy canvas bin from the supermarket, or a plastic crate shoved behind the sofa where nobody would see it. It did the job. It was also faintly depressing.

Useful, or lovely. A basket, I had decided, could only ever be useful.

So I hid it, the way we all hide the ugly-but-necessary things, and never once thought there might be another option.

How I found it

Last autumn, my friend Sarah invited me round for tea. As I walked into her sitting room, I stopped. There, next to the sofa, was the most beautiful basket I had ever seen. A group of little sheep on a green hillside, every one slightly different, every curly coat stitched by hand. I couldn't stop looking at it.

I asked Sarah where on earth she'd found it. She smiled and said: "A woman in Hawes makes them. She's been doing it for twenty-eight years. A little shop called Ginny & Co has the last of them."

The woman who makes them

Her name is Sue. She is seventy-one years old and lives in a stone cottage at the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, with a window that looks out over the same sheep fields she has been stitching for twenty-eight years.

She started quilting in 1998, the year she lost her husband Bill. They'd been married for thirty-two years. After the funeral, she couldn't sleep. The house was too quiet — she kept hearing his chair creak in the next room, except he wasn't in it. A neighbour called Mary took her along to a quilting group at the village hall one Tuesday evening. Sue didn't want to go. But she went, because the alternative was another evening sitting in that silence.

She began with cushion covers. Simple things. Then one morning she looked out of her kitchen window at the sheep in the field opposite, picked up a scrap of fabric, and stitched a small curly sheep onto a basket frame. That first little sheep changed everything.

Twenty-eight years later, Sue has quilted thousands of sheep, foxes, owls, hedgehogs, and wildflower meadows — all from the same window, all by hand. No machine. No factory. No two baskets are ever quite the same, because Sue doesn't work from a pattern. She works from what she sees outside her window that morning.

Why these are the last

When I spoke to Ginny last month, she told me something I wasn't ready to hear.

Sue's hands aren't what they were. Arthritis has taken hold. The fingers that have stitched thousands of tiny sheep over twenty-eight years are stiff now, swollen at the knuckles. Some mornings it takes her half an hour just to thread the needle. But she still sits down at that window every single day, because she isn't ready to stop — not quite yet.

She told Ginny she wants to make one final collection. Nine designs, each one different, each one finished by the same two hands that made the very first sheep in 1998.

And then she is going to set down her needle for the last time.

What happened when David saw it

I had it sitting next to the sofa, out in the open for the first time. No more hiding the storage in the corner.

My husband David walked in and said it looked like something from a little shop in the Cotswolds. I let him think that for a good minute. Two friends have asked since, and one has already ordered her own.

Sue's granddaughter used to name every single sheep on it before bed. She still does.

What struck me, though, was how much such a small thing changed a corner of the room. A thing I used to hide now looks cheerful, out in the open, and I find I don't mind the tidying quite as much. I went back and bought the fox one for my daughter's birthday.

Three things I've learned since

One. The quilting is what makes it look expensive. Because it's thick and structured, it stands up on its own even when empty and doesn't sag into a heap. It looks like a proper piece of the room rather than something you're trying to hide.

Two. The handles matter more than you'd think. Two sturdy quilted handles make carrying a full basket of throws or toys from one room to another completely effortless.

Three. The sort of thing a grandchild wanders over to and can't stop touching. There is something about a hand-quilted sheep that a child simply cannot leave alone. If you have grandchildren, you already know what I mean.

About the price

I want to be straightforward about this, because it was the thing that made me suspicious.

Sue's baskets are £89.95. They were £179.90. And right now, Ginny is running a buy one, get one free offer — so that's two of Sue's baskets for the price of one. Any two designs you like.

My first thought, honestly, was that baskets this beautiful and this well made would cost a fortune. The quilted ones in the smart interiors shops certainly do.

There is no catch that I have found. Ginny & Co is a small boutique selling directly, so there is nobody taking a cut in the middle. And because each basket is handcrafted to order by Sue, every one is made fresh — no warehouse full of stock gathering dust.

I did what I imagine you are doing now and went and read everything I could find before I ordered my second. The same things kept coming up. One woman had written, "My granddaughter won't go to bed without naming every sheep first." That was the one that decided it for me.

What I would tell you if we were friends

If you and I were sat in the garden with a cup of tea and you asked me, this is what I would say.

If you have an ugly plastic crate or a saggy canvas bin you keep shoving behind the sofa and meaning to replace, it is worth ten minutes of your evening to go and have a look.

Not because a basket changes anything. It doesn't. But a small corner of the house being cheerful instead of hidden is a nicer way to live, and it is a very small price for that.

The buy one, get one free offer is on at the moment. There are nine designs — sheep, foxes, owls, hedgehogs, cottages, and wildflower meadows. And because Sue is making her very last baskets, once they're gone, they are gone for good. No one will make them quite like this again.

The basket is out in the open now, and five friends have asked where I got it.

Jessica

Buy one, get one free. Sue's final collection — when they're gone, they're gone.