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
Happy sewing with friends in Bristol
Am at the Aztec West hotel just outside Bristol (part of the Shire Hotels & Spa group) with friends sewing for the whole weekend - how blissful is that: car issues on arrival but now all sorted. Here are Carol Liebzeit and Chris Porter busy with their work in Progress: Carol is due to teach at Midsomer Quilting next week - split 9 patch - which will be bright and zinggy - Carol's signature colours.
Your comments
Thanks ladies, it is a brilliant website and so nice to now have the search button. Well done I love this site. Rosemary New site looks cool! Couple of jobs to do this evening then going to settle down for a 'play'!!!!! Keep up the good work, it is really appreciated. Kind regards Donna So glad I joined this community, lots of great information and fabulous videos.
Best regards
Sue Congratulations on the new website, not only looks good but is very user friendly.
Kind regards
Leoni Just loving your new website.
More filming for the site
We spent a very productive Sunday filming content for the site in the classroom of Creative Quilting (take a tour in the video). I was joined by textile artist, Valentina Brunn who shared with us some of her wonderful work as well as giving us a short workshop on how to create landscapes using bondaweb, paint and stitching – wait and see! She also uses tyvex to great effect and shows us how.