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
National Patchwork Championship weekend
Val: Well what a weekend we had; hubby and I were at the show at Sandown Racecourse, Esher in Surrey with our Justhands-on.tv hats on and it was such a pleasure to meet so many of you. I was also helping on the Creative Quilting stand - and boy were we busy there too, and then on Sunday I was there with the boys from Bizview.tv filming for the future - we met the new girls from Coloricious who make DVDs for the mixed media textile side of our business; Claire from Hannah's room did a great workshop for us using paints and shaving foam - you need to see it to believe it, but really great; Jennifer Trollope came up with a very clever colour workshop to use up our scraps into a very appealing kaleidoscope effect and using pritt stick (or similar!) and we had a truely terrific interview with Jacquie Harvey who is a very talented handquilting artist and her christening gown won the overall Championship rosette as well as the Handquilting rosette and the Wearable art rosette.
Endorsement from Karin Hellaby
Val; Karin Hellaby, quilter, author and owner of Quilters Haven said this : I do hope you will take a look at this fast growing site and consider becoming a member. With your help it can only get better and better! Why not email the link to all your quilting friends worldwide to let them know that here is a site that is showing what is going on in the textile world in the UK.
How to Make Tumbling Blocks Patchwork
Val: Tumbling blocks are a traditional favourite and often done over papers; it is based on the light/medium/dark theme to give dimension. In this short video our Jennie shows you how to make this pattern without papers and shows you the technique for insetting the seam, which works for both machine and handwork. One of the quilts on display at the current V&A Exhibition shows a scrap version of this - so now you can make your own!