HAND-SEWN artworks remain littered around a house as a husband pays tribute to his “loving and warm” late wife.

A textile artist by trade, Gilda Baron has had her artwork exhibited at a number of world-renowned venues across the globe, including London’s Barbican Centre.

Displaying a love of art from the tender age of two-years-old, she had a varied career as an artist from learning the dressmaking trade and designing “gawdy” waistcoats to carefully hand-sewing intricate 3D landscapes.

Husband Graham Zeitlin, of Flambard Road, Kenton, said: “Gilda was always hard at work, sometimes until 1am, because to her it wasn’t work. She was doing what she loved.

“She was so hard working, never stopped.”

Ms Baron also taught adult education classes in art at Missenden Abbey and was also a successful author, with her how-to book The Art of Embroidered Flowers being sold around the world and translated into Russian and Norwegian.

Mr Zeitlin added: “She was real inspiration to those students.

“Many of them sent her and me letters while she was ill and you could really see how much she meant to them.”

The couple, who met through friends and have been married for more than 25 years, were left in shock after doctors diagnosed Gilda with cancer earlier this year.

Mr Zeitlin said: “She had three months by the time they found out what it was, so it was too far gone to treat.

“She spent the last two months of her life here at home, in a hospital bed looking out into our garden which we both loved.

“I’m more of a potterer than a gardener, but we both loved the garden. It’s so natural, something she loved.”

Director Mohammed Fahili, who runs an Arab-Jewish community centre in Akko, Israel, flew to the artist’s bedside one Sunday in June.

The couple first met the director years ago after attending a talk at the House of Lords and were so impressed by his work that they visited his centre in Israel and struck up a new friendship.

Mr Zeitlin said: "The place was amazing, so inspiring, and we started to donate money to help their work continue.

“When I told him Gilda was terminally ill, Fahili immediately decided to come to London to visit her and flew over for one day especially to sit with her.

“She was delighted to see him and said how wonderful it was that he had come all that way.

“The fact that an Arab Muslim flew from Israel to London for just one day to visit a sick Jewish woman is so significant, it is just so heart-warming.”

Akko is a city where Arab and Jewish inhabitants lived side-by-side, but had never really interacted until Mohammed Fahili opened the centre in 1990.

The centre continues to provide services, ranging from women's clubs to summer camps, and Mr Zeitlin says he has continued with the couple’s donations and a new centre for women will now be opened in the town in Gilda’s name.

It is Gilda’s generosity that she will most be remembered for, according to her husband – who is an active volunteer working at the Imperial War Museum, the 1940s House in Bushey and the Battle of Britain Museum at Bentley Priory.

He said: “She was a quiet lady, but warm, generous and kind, and she loved people. She saw the best in everyone and never judged.

“Where other people would donate £10 to charity, she would donate a thousand, but she was so modest and would never admit to how much she did to try and help.”

Ms Baron died on August 2, at 77-years-old, and leaves behind her three daughters from a previous marriage and five grandchildren - three of her own and two from Mr Zeitlin’s family.