YORK artist Emily Sutton has won a place in our hearts for her magical picture-book scenes of the world we see around us everyday.

Her paintings, designs, prints and illustrations delight in the streets and the shops, the markets, homes and countryside around her and are filled with a childlike joy of discovery.

It is a world many will already know from her book illustrations for the Victoria and Albert Museum, Walker Books, Faber and Faber and Penguin and for her designs for clients including Bettys, Fortnum and Mason and Hermes.

This winter affords a new look at Emily's art in Town And Country, the biggest solo show of her work, being staged by the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield Based on work in Yorkshire and France, alongside new paintings, prints and designs for ceramics and silk scarves, the exhibition includes a chance to see for the first time Emily's installation of a glass-cased forest filled with beautiful hand-sewn sculptures of birds.

These painted and sewn sculptures represent a side of her work that has brought her international attention as an artist, and yet it is work that was initially part of her private world and that might never have been seen at all.

Emily Sutton grew up drawing; she could draw before she could even hold a pencil properly.

"I wasn't somebody that enjoyed loud parties; I wanted to sit quietly in the corner; I became good by default I guess," she says. "I love escaping through my work. When life is stressful, I find comfort, peace and quiet in my work; it is very intricate and detailed, and I really enjoy working on the detail."

At the same time as drawing, like many children she made things, such as characters from the picture books she loved, and when she was a teenager she became interested in York's Teddy Bear Shop in Stonegate where they sell traditional Steiff bears.

She bought books on how to make them, buying the glass eyes she still uses for her birds today, and mohair, patterns and supplies and "seriously got into 3D things".

"I've always made little toys, and cushions, pillows, bags and things like that. I enjoyed the process of making 3D things, doing stitching is very different from the focused attention of drawing and painting, " she says.

For her, sewing was just a break. "Sewing feels like a respite; it is methodical and a repetitive routine and keeps my hands busy. I never thought of it as connected to the more serious illustration work."

While studying for her foundation course at York College, she visited the American Museum of Folk Art in New York.

Even though she did not introduce them until a few years later, when she was preparing her show for her degree in illustration at Edinburgh College of Art, she was opened to the possibility that the things she had been making and sewing all her life could also be considered as part of her serious art practice.

She visited the American museum with her tutor, another well loved York artist, Mark Hearld, who is famous for his collages, prints, paintings and designs, and today, many years later, is also her partner.

The two are both influenced by their love of traditional illustration, printmaking and design. Their York home is full of the objects they love – ceramics, prints, fabrics, not so much ‘high art’ as popular or democratic ‘folk art’ – and a collection of taxidermy, which Emily admits she had in mind when planning her bird display in the YSP shop window.

For her degree project, she made a High Street box, a glass case with fabric figures of shopkeepers standing in the street, filled with life and character.

She then made The Dawn Chorus, fabric birds based on a Ladybird Book, and was featured in World Of Interiors magazine in 2008, which brought her global success. All the birds sold out, many to America.

Her latest collection of 38 birds for the YSP has taken her 18 months to plan and make, working out the overall aesthetic, the scale, the sculptural forms, different colours and patterns, and then painting, stitching, and creating the details within.

“As soon as I saw that big glass-fronted space I knew it was a really great opportunity. I’ve never had space that big; it’s quite like an installation. I created a whole scene and found it exciting,” she says.

“It’s a little living magical forest. I try to make the birds as alive as possible, it is a slow intensive process, they never look really alive until you put the eyes in, the positioning is very important.”

The exhibition has, she says, taken her off in new directions. It took her travelling to the South of France and the Marais district of Paris, the subject of new paintings for this exhibition. It pushed her and gave her new confidence to work on a larger scale.

“The jobs that I get now I have to pinch myself it’s all so exciting, it’s happened gradually, but all of a sudden the years are just full,” she says.

What surprises her the most is being asked to give talks, teaching and workshops. To go alongside her exhibition at the YSP, Emily will be demonstrating how to make the tea towel she has designed into a song thrush, sitting on its nest, and giving a hat-making workshop for children on February 7, based on her book Clara Button And The Magical Hat Day, which she illustrated for the Victoria and Albert Museum. “It’s kind of weird, I only just feel I have enough experience, but I like working with children,” she says. “I enjoy the innocence you have as a child. I am a children’s book illustrator, and I am in that world still.”

• Emily Sutton: Town And Country runs at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, near Wakefield, until February 22. All works are available to buy, including Emily’s first limited-edition lithograph print September Dresser (2014), produced by Curwen Studio and exclusive to YSP. Also on sale is a range of exclusive merchandise, designed by the artist, including a tote bag, plates and mugs, a silk scarf and a cut-and-sew tea towel.

• Town And Country coincides with the publication of Transferware Treasures, a limited-edition, hand-bound, fold-out book of Emily Sutton’s watercolours of Victorian transferware, published by Fleece Press.