About Claire
Claire is a modern quilt designer and teacher, based in Stratford Upon Avon in the UK.
Claire has always had a love for sewing which was reignited when her children were born and needed a creative outlet for herself. It wasn’t long before quilts were the only thing she wanted to sew.
In 2020, during the pandemic, when Claire was stuck between never ending on-line lessons with her kids home-schooling, she designed her first quilt pattern, the Retro Metro Quilt. It was a way she could still channel her creativity when life wouldn’t allow much time behind the sewing machine. Since then, Claire has immersed herself into the quilt designing world and has had her work featured in Love Patchwork & Quilting magazine and justhands-on.tv videos.
Claire’s designs are Inspired by modern geometric designs and repeated patterns – – wherever she finds them – – including toilet tiles and the front covers of books. Claire is the designer behind Made Just Sew. Click her to see her bright, colourful designs.
Though not formally educated in art or teaching, Claire has excelled as a quilting teacher – – winning the Big Janome Skill Share in 2021. What makes her unique is her passion for quilting and a passion for sharing what she has learned.
Click here to watch Claire share her Walking Foot Quilting techniques in an episode of The Makers Studio.
Keep up to date and follow Claire’s quilt journey over on Instagram @madejustsew
Signature Technique
Quilting with a Walking Foot
Top Tips
- Pick your backing fabric first, then match your front colours to your backing. This works really well for those of us who love colourful printed fabrics for our backing.
- If you’ve struggled with quilting, use the walking foot. It makes quilting so much easier.
- Don’t be afraid to quilt straight lines across your patchwork. It gives your project enhanced depth and texture.
- Marking quilting lines with a hera marker provides a useful guide for your straight line quilting.
- Don’t worry about mistakes. We all do it! Remember, you can always unpick stitches and come at it fresh tomorrow.
- Use quilting gloves to help you guide your quilt under the walking foot. The sticky tips of the glove give you a little extra grip.
- If you want your quilting to stand out, choose good quality colour thread to contrast the top. Colour thread can look dominating when on the spool, less so when on your quilt.
Videos
Posts
Miniature joy
One of our lovely members Viv had chatted to Valerie at the West Country Quilt show in Bristol last year about Julia Gahagan's Miniature quilts. She was busy making this lovely alpine village pattern and was learning how to do it from Julia's video on our site. She was determined to finish it by Christmas - and she did.
She told us has really enjoyed making it and we agree with everyone who she has shown it to, that it is a very pretty piece of work - Very well done indeed Viv!!!
5 May 2017
New Videos Every Friday Postcard quilt from Valerie Nesbitt [...]
Filming with Carolyn Forster
What a great day we had together with Carolyn last week and we have some really lovely workshops ready for editing; Carolyn spent the day sharing with us her 'Joy of Sewing' and we have a whole series of workshops on how to sew patchwork by hand - a great alternative to EPP and not a stitch in sight! She also showed us how to design cable quilting which you can customize for your own quilt size; there is a super quick layer-cake bag and a wonderful woven scrap quilt too (see picture below).