I’ve moved

Over the next few months I will be working to combine my blog and my website in one location. Click here to go to my new blog.

A Fun Sewing Day

I really enjoyed sewing today. I finished up a Quilted Pillow Sham for the August club project.

I made piping using a really pretty green and off white leafy print; the same fabric is on the back of the pillow. The Gooving’ Piping Trimming Tool helped to trim the seam allowance to an exact 1/4”.

 

I also made buttonholes. The back of the pillow sham overlaps and the buttons keep it closed. Want to see the front? Well you have to wait until August.

The pillow sham turned out beautifully. Now I just have to finish up the instructions.

An Elegant Cover

The May embroidery club project and designs are up and ready for download, click here to get to the download page. This month we’re making an elegant Tissue Box Cover in two sizes.
 


The tissue box fits right inside the Tissue Box Cover, so it is completely hidden.

Two sizes are included; the small squarish box and the long rectangular box. Specific sizes are given in the instructions. We purchased our tissue boxes from No Frills. If you would like to make a different size, other than the ones given here, it is best to make one of the sizes given here and then adapt from there.

You will also need a monogram. For the small tissue box cover the monogram should measure approximately 1 1/4" x 2". For the large tissue box cover the monogram should measure approximately 1 1/4" x 2 1/2". You can create the monogram with lettering from your embroidery sewing machine's built-in lettering, using a monogram disk or card, or with your embroidery software.

And don’t forget how much prettier monograms look with a bit of Puffy Foam, so be sure to download our .PDF tutorial here.

Patricia from Life’s a Stitch in Sault Ste. Marie suggested using a light interfacing to add a bit of body and stability to lighter weight cottons.

A new venture!

I am so excited to tell you that Janice Wray and I are back in business together. Our new venture is an online pattern company. The new site is Claire Charles Sewing Patterns. We’re selling handbag patterns, for now. We’ve started off with 6 handbag patterns; they are classic pieces that you can create over and over again. We plan to add regularly to this collection. Here’s a peek at a couple of the patterns. Visit our site for more.

Don’t forget to stop by our blog where you will find sewing tips, tutorials, freebies and lots of other fun activities. Want to enjoy the convenience of having this information come to you automatically, every time it is updated? Subscribe to our blog's RSS feed.

Happy Easter

Happy Easter everyone!



The embroidered egg is from the February 2008 Sew Creative Embroidery club project. Don’t have it? Ask your retailer.

Joyce’s Mini Sewing Retreat

Just finished a sewing retreat at Joyce’s Sewing Shop in London. She planned a 2 1/2 day event – Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It was lots of fun. I did a trunk show of my Sew Creative projects on Thursday. She sold embroidery club projects!

I taught 3 classes; 4D Embroidery Plus, a Cutwork Table Topper:

And one of my favorite projects, this fabulous Shoe bag.

And hurray, hurray everyone finished their projects! It’s is such a good feeling when students can actually finish their projects in class. Thanks Joyce, Kelly, Betty and Sue!

Brushing Up

The April embroidery club project and designs are up and ready for download, click here to get to the download page. It’s a Cosmetic Brush Rollup. And, it makes a great gift for your favorite girl.
We used four different fabrics in this project; two prints and two solids. Sounds like a lot for a small project, but they work beautifully. I especially love the dot binding. You can’t buy funky binding like this, you have to make it. If you too would like to make your own bias binding click here to download the tutorial.
Patricia from Life’s A Stitch in Sault Ste. Marie, (my proof reader) wasn’t happy with the topstitching of the brush channels showing through to the right side, so she topstitched the pocket onto the lining and then stitched the lining onto the outer fabric.
 
Anyway, have fun with this one. Let me know what you think??

Cross Stitched Linen bread bags for March

 

The March embroidery club project and designs are up and ready for download, click here to get to the download page. The project is a pretty bread bag embellished with cross stitch embroidery and a “vintage look” lace edging.

Every Easter my mom makes beautiful braided egg bread. This is a tradition for us that goes back for generations. While the bread is still warm, she carefully wraps each loaf in a linen tea towel to keep the crust from ruining. And then the best part, she gives us a loaf. It's golden yellow, fluffy and lightly sweet, in one word it's yummy. So yummy in fact that it inspired this pretty bread bag. This year I plan to give her a few of these so that she can give them away with her beautiful bread.

Now it occurred to me that not everyone makes their own bread, so by all means go ahead and buy the bread to store in your bread bag. Actually the bread bag is a great way to store any bread, especially if you don't like the idea of stuffing it directly into a plastic bag. If your bread lasts more than a day or so, you may have to put it into some kind of plastic, but it is better wrapped in fabric first. And, be sure to wash the fabric bags after each use; mold spores remain and can cause a new loaf of bread to spoil sooner.

I’ve been told to never store bread in the refrigerator. Apparently the temperature is just right for the starch to gelatinize - eeew. Bread keeps well in the freezer though. I know I do it all the time. Just be sure to freeze while it is still fresh. Cause if you freeze stale bread, when it thaws you get stale bread, of course.

When I imagined embroidery for my bread bag, cross stitch immediately came to mind. It seemed the perfect touch for a vintage project idea. I think it turned out beautifully. There are actually two different borders included with the projects, even though I did not get a picture of the second border.

This is a fairly simple project and the instructions are straight forward. The one thing that I will remind is to prewash your linen. I made the mistake of not washing my striped beige linen, so when I washed out the stabilizer, you guessed it the fabric shrunk. Won’t make that mistake again. By the way the lace is not in the hoop. It’s made by stitching several rows of a seam overcast stitch onto wash away stabilizer. It’s a technique that’s been around for a while, you will love it for this project. Have fun!

We’re Back

St. Lucia was wonderful. We stayed at the Almond Morgan Bag resort. Would go back in a flash.
It’s so lush. The background looks like a postcard. It is the view from the Wedding gazebo on the resort. Very pretty.

We took a day trip around the coast of St. Lucia. That’s me in the striped bathing suit top, trying to stand under the waterfall.

Now back to reality. I have to get to the next embroidery club project. It’s just a few days away.

On the fly

Hello everyone, hope you are enjoying this month’s embroidery club project. Well I am off for a short vacation to St. Lucia. We’re leaving tomorrow afternoon. And, yes I am all packed. Well except for a few sticky notes with things to pack at the last minute.

Do you recognize this bag??

You should. It’s the Appliquéd Messenger Bag, without the appliqué. Kind-a hard to tell, but I have also added a zipper to the top, instead of the magnetic snap. Nice addition, I have to say. Love the extra security of a zipper. The best part is the weight, or lack there of. It’s made of nylon and it is super light. Fabric handbags are always lighter than leather ones, but nylon rocks. So amazing for shopping. I was so inspired that I purchased more nylon. Now I can hardly wait to come back from vacation to make another one. OK, I didn’t believe that either. I can wait, but I am really excited about the nylon bag. Anyway, that’s it for now. Talk to you after St. Lucia.

Warm and Cozy

It’s that time of the month for my retail embroidery club members. Time to download the February embroidery club project and designs, click here to get to the download page.

This month it’s a cozy hot water bottle cover. It’s embellished with embroidery designs from the coordinating design set Folk Art Appliqué Embroidery Designs #sc042d. This appliqué technique is very different from the satin stitch appliqué. I really hope you enjoy the embroidery process. Patricia from Sault Ste Marie used polar fleece for her hot water bottle cover. With the polar fleece background she found that the stems sunk into the pile, so she stitched over them once more and liked the results. So if you plan to use polar fleece, try this technique. Have fun and let me know how your club members feel.

Wrapping it up

Happy New Year! Been a little under the weather between Christmas and New Year, but feeling better now. Thank God, I’ve got lots of sewing to do. I did finish up my Christmas presents and took a few pics to show. I made a fun little art tote for my great nice Alexa. There are lots of these around, from crayon rolls to little tote bags, this is my version. It has a pocket for a pad of paper and slots for the crayons.

I created a pocket on the side for odds and ends.

When it’s closed, it looks like a tote.

Alexa loves it. She’s been carrying it around with her everywhere they have gone, over the holidays. More importantly her mom, Erica, loves it cause it keeps Alexa busy on the road. Actually I needed to make the tote just a bit larger, enough to fit a standard sized coloring book. I think I made it 9” square, or so. Trying to make it small enough for a three year old to carry and large enough to fit stuff is difficult. Erica also mentioned that she would have liked it to have some kind of a closure. Anyway, I will work out these little changes and it will likely wind up as an embroidery club project.
I also made a couple of these neck warmers. You just slip them over the head and scrunch up to keep your neck warm. You can also pull it up over your ears. Soo easy to make. It’s just a strip sewn into a tube with a hem at both ends. A serger makes it neat, but since fleece does not fray a sewing machine works just as well.