Paulette Joan Brough moved to Lewis for a quiet life and started her handbag cottage industry

"You hear it all the time - it makes a rasping noise like someone pulling their finger down a comb," says Paulette Joan Brough. "It drives you mad, but you never see it."

Her company, Rarebird Handbags, is named for the corncrake, so synonymous is it with the islands where she has made her home.

In 2005, Brough, 50, moved to Lewis from Bolton, Lancashire, with her husband Steve when they were both made redundant. They were in search of a quieter, simpler way of life. "I had the idea of coming to paint pictures and write a book. Steve was going to work on the house. We were going to have this idyllic life ..."

However, within a year their dreams of a "quiet" life proved somewhat inaccurate.

"I'd decided I wasn't going to have anything to do with sewing or fashion, but I started a job at a kiltmakers," laughs Brough. "While I was there, one of the other kiltmakers asked if I'd like to go to the Harris Tweed mill in my dinner hour. I fancied making a handbag for myself so went to get a piece of tweed."

What surprised her was the myriad colours in the fabric. "I thought it would be grey and brown and that's about it, but even if you get a piece of Harris tweed that's brown, when you look at it, it's not just a flat colour; it will have golds and reds and purples in it. You could have 14 different colours mixed together. It's dyed in the wool so it gives it a lot of depth. I just wanted to keep making something else and then something else."

Six months later she was selling her bags at a Christmas market. Then she sent some samples to Japan with a trade delegation from the Harris Tweed Authority. "I couldn't go because I was just a tiny business then, but I gave a couple of handbags to a friend who was going. One of the buyers saw one and loved it. The following year, he bought some bags and it just went from there. This year they've bought even more."

This week she is in Japan in person, showcasing her work at the British Fair in Hankyu department store, Osaka, where getting hold of one of the bags is as rare - and as precious - as spotting a corncrake. Then, on Thursday, she will be taking part in the Textiles Scotland event in London, alongside major fashion names such as Holly Fulton, Belinda Robertson and Holland and Sherry.

But what gives her an even bigger kick is when she sees someone on the street, loving one of her bags. "It's really nice when you see somebody and they're carrying it as though it's important to them," she says.

"It's not just the bag they go shopping with and throw on the floor. It's the one they really take care of."

Currently, they sell for between 38 and 350 at the gift shops in Dunvegan Castle and Over The Rainbow on Skye, though she hopes her website might soon become transactional. But does she worry her real-life cottage industry - "at the moment it's just me, my husband and Nicola, a girl I'm training up" - might turn into a monster?

"Not really," she says. "I wanted to do something that was of the island, and I loved the tweed so much I wanted to shout about it. The more people who buy the tweed, the more weavers will be working.

"I know I'm only a tiny bit of the equation, but the more people who see the tweed the better it is for the island in the long run." n

www.rarebirdhandbags.com

www.textilescotland.com

• This article was first published in the Scotland on Sunday on October 10, 2010