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
Printing images onto fabric
I wish to make a cot quilt for my expected grandchild and would like to make some of the squares personalised by printing images from my computer onto the fabric. I see there are several methods of achieving this and wonder if in your experience you could recommend a tried and tested way. As this is for a baby, it will obviously be subjected to washing so the method needs to produce waterproof squares Answer: As far as I am aware the fabrics that have been designed to go through your printer for use with your computer work well - and I am not aware that the brand makes any difference. These should be readily available from your quilt shop (or www.creativequilting.co.uk).
You could also use a method which uses fixing ink - but that is a little messier - but used by the textile girls a lot and I think produced by a company called Electric Quilt (who design computere software) and I know is stocked by The Cotton Patch and possibly Art Van Go as well as they are great suppliers of all things required by textile artists.
Does the Microtak gun make holes in the quilt?
Well its a yes and a no; the original gun did have HUGE tags that made really nasty holes and I refused to use or stock them (I owned a quilt shop at the time); however the current generation has a much smaller needle and tiny tags which hold the layers better since we have moved to flatter wadding and don't make holes in the fabric. I use them all the time and despite having several 000 in each box seem to be constantly running out!!!!
TIP: do invest in a tack remover as well as this will keep your quilt safe from little snips from your scissors and also stop you being tempted to use your best scissors to remove them (and spoil your scissors) NB: all these products are in the shop
Another great filming day with Jennie Rayment
From bunting to pincushions; waistcoats to neck bands; Serging to Pineapples - we had a great day and Jennie as always was on good form; lots of great content for the site - you will just have to keep watching!