AN ARTIST who creates unique garments in spun silk, mohair, cashmere and Icelandic wool has travelled the world constantly reinventing herself.

Fiona Potter, 71, whose small studio and shop is named ‘Fi fi la Bonk’, has also worked in less exotic materials and on display, in a large glass box, is an outfit incorporating spun condoms, created for an Aids arts exhibition in Seattle.

Ms Potter, who is also a painter, said: “I worked in Seattle for six-and-a-half years, often with a graphic designer from aircraft-makers Boeing.

“That is where I developed ‘Condom Art’ after being sponsored by a church group.

“One time I went to an HIV/Aids exhibition in Laguna Beach with a range of clothes and sold a painting to raise the air fare.

“Everything I create has involved lots of emotion and when someone buys a unique piece they are getting some of those feelings.

“These are not formulaic pieces of art.

“I spin for texture and love the look of things like ploughed fields.

“Sometimes I have pieces that I am not happy to sell even though they seem completed.

“In the early 2000s, when I was working under my married name of Fiona Watson with a conceptual artist in St Andrews, I did a lot of the technical work, which at one time involved making straitjackets.

“That’s where the name Fi fi la Bonk came from when the artist said it one day.”

After her time in the States, Ms Potter moved to Peebles after an “affair of the heart” and opened her first studio in School Brae about six years ago, before crossing the street to her current location.

Many of Ms Potter’s coats and jackets are for sale in the studio and, without a website or Facebook presence, are also available on eBay.

Ms Potter said: “As well as being very wearable, I have garments in exhibitions all over the world.

“I had jackets in Edinburgh department store Jenners in the 1980s and they sold them with a 300 per cent mark-up.”

Earlier this month two Australian tourists visited Fi fi la Bonk and were amazed to learn Ms Potter has many clients Down Under.

One said: “Nowhere else in the world could you get something like that.”