Just to let everybody know that there will be kids classes during the half term break on Tuesday 31st of May, the Saturday classes will be happening as normal and there will be the Just Sew Craft Club happening on the Sunday for more details please drop us an email at justsewbrighton@yahoo.co.uk  I will update soon with the projects we will be doing so watch this space!

Weve been having a lot of fun at Just sew over the Summer Holidays weve had extra kids classes in the week on Tuesdays and Wedanesdays,weve been making things like Pajama bottoms, aprons inspired by the 50s and this week we tried feltmaking....

....LOADS of fun!! Messy but really cool everybody made a terrific few pieces of felt we used carders also to mix colours and get some really cool effects we started out with felt pieces inspired by fish and there were a lot of polka dots and striped going on it was great!!

Next week is a patchwork cushion using log cabin patchwork and an envelope back its going to be really interesting to see what colour combinations the kids come up with I love patchwork!!

We have also been keeping up with the kids classes on the Saturdays too weve been making doormice doorstops, Daushaunds galore and this week we are going to try our hand at making a quilted tray will post photos whern we are done.

We are going to be starting our teen classes agin in September and Im really excited to see the project that the teens will be working on some amazing stuff was made last term Jumpsuits, dresses soft furnishings, and shorts so it will be really interesting to see what will be being made this term!!

People are always impressed with the Union Jack cushion and it's fun to make! It takes about 3-4 hours depending how skilly you are and you don't need much fabric.

You will need - (measurements will follow!)

• red fabric (2 strips @ 2 7/8 inches wide) + (2 strips @ 1 6/8 inches wide)
• white fabric (7 strips @ 1 1/8 inches wide)
• blue fabric (fat quarter) 
• plain backing fabric (could be calico) ( 22" x 16")
• calico to make inner cushion (22" x 16" x 2)
• piping cord (optional)
• rotary cutter
• cutting mat
• patchwork ruler
• pins
• Use 1/4 inch seam allowance - 1/4 inch seam foot is a great help!
  

It's a good idea to have the pattern in front of you while you work, that way you can see

how each part of the flag looks as you're making it. I drew it out on a large piece of paper

but you could refer back to a photograph instead.

The piece you can see on the pattern below I will call the block.

Cut the red and white fabric into strips and stitch a white strip to either side of the red strip.

Iron your strips so they are flat.



Lay the template onto the strips and cut around the template to make the centre of the block.

Remember you are cutting out 4 pieces and they have to go on opposite sides of your

flag so cut 2 one way then flip the template over and cut another 2.

On your red and white piece, the long flat end always goes nearest to the centre of the flag.

Cut out the blue triangles and lay them on your pattern. These also have to be

cut out 2 with the pattern piece right side up, then the other 2 when the pattern piece is flipped over.

Make up the first block as follows.

Lay your pieces out so you can see how they will go together. When you place your

first blue triangle onto the white strip to sew together, you have to look closely at where

the starting points meet. This is a little tricky to explain, but when you stitch and then

open your work out, your sides need to be in line, or close to being in line.

Pin the other triangle onto the other white strip, fold the triangle out to check your sides

are even before you sew the pieces together.

Once they're stitched together, iron them open and flat. Pay attention to the direction

you're ironing the seams underneath to help keep your work flat.

Now you can see what I meant about the sides not meeting!

This is easy to remedy when you have a rotary cutter and a ruler. It's a good idea at this stage

to make all your blocks have straight edges so the rest of the sewing together goes smoothly.

Cut around block template using a ruler.

Now you have one block you need to make the other 3!

When you have all 4 block finished the next step is to stitch on white strips to each edge.

Start with the inside sides of each block.

Pin and stitch, then cut off to the size of the block and iron flat.

Join 2 blocks together with a wide red strip. Start sewing at the edge closest to

the middle of the flag, to ensure this edge is straight.

Take the long red strip and attach it to one side of your flag, then cut the end of the strip off.

Iron the strip flat and lay the other side of the flag onto the strip. You need to roll back

this side of the flag until you can see where the strip joins the other side of the flag.

Match the seams so your flag looks neat.

Once the edges are together, pin in place and stitch along the edge.

Now open up and iron and enjoy the Ta Da moment!

And a closer look...

Weve been up to all sorts the past few weeks we have been making fathers day wallets, camera bags and there have been sock pigs make out of some of the craziest coloured socks imaginable, but my favourite so far has to be these AWESOME aprons...(they were meant to be barbecue aprons but they ended up becoming personlised craft aprons and they all looked amazing!!

...We have kids classes on Saturdays at Just Sew and we get up to all sorts of fun, we have made bears, owls, bags, picture frames, bugs and many many other things too. 

I love doing the kids classes, its always awesome seeing what the kids do with an idea and the way they use colours and textures its always inspiring, here are some photos of some of our latest projects...

Felix and I used to hang out all the time, making stuff, at our leisure...this is felix, he's very relaxed.
I then made a toy like felix as you do when you've got all day!



 

This was before christmas, that's why he's wearing a scarf..it was cold! And yes I did knit that scarf,

scarves are the only thing I can knit! Now we have the new shop there's not as much sewing time

as there was before but as we love it, we fit it in every week, even if it's only to make the sample for the

kids classes on Saturday. Part of the fun of a shop is having access to so many new and

quirky products, buttons, fabrics, ribbons, trims etc. I'm always on the look out for something new to buy in

for my projects...I mean the shop. I will be putting them on this site so you can see them to so watch this space!

This is our latest window, thanks to Pomlove.com and Jane from Stitch Club. If you've been past the shop lately and it appears to be closed all the time, it's not that we're slackers and not getting out of bed...although who could blame us with all this lousy weather! We are actually working ever more in our new shop across the road. We are now the proud owners of the Brighton Sewing Centre and we sell sewing machines and parts, habidashery and a few fat quarters. We still service and repair sewing machines, well Brian and Alan do, and they have about 25 years experience each! So if you've been wondering why we haven't updated our website since about October it's because we've been Sooooooo busy getting organised. In fact the new shop is still a work in progress, I've painted one wall and one shelf. I'm hoping the rest will get done this weekend as it's driving me a bit crazy, it's not as nice as Just Sew but it will be soon. We are open Monday to Saturday 9.30am - 5pm so pop in some time, we're always there!

Today Jane and I spent all afternoon changing the window, it's not quite finished but it will stay this way until halloween. It looks better in real life, it was already dark when I took this photo so it's a bit grainy, I'll get a better picture when it's finished but I'm very pleased.

I was so excited to see this magazine yesterday. I had been contacted by a busy editor asking for an image and I didn't have what she wanted so I wasn't sure if we would be in the magazine or not. After much scouring though I found our Shop listed in the A - Z of pound-saving tricks, under H for haberdashery. To be clear, we don't stock haberdashery at the moment but we do teach people how to sew. Really I don't care what it says I'm just thrilled to be in Vogue!!!!

We started a new class on Sunday and well done to everyone who attended, it started at 10am. That shows the dedication and love we all have for free machine embroidery, or the love of the idea of it. As it was our first ever lesson and we didn't really know what we were getting into...Sunday mornings, £100?? It was really good fun. Our teacher, Sally Goodyer, told us we were going to start with zig zag and the normal foot and I was quietly disappointed, so I made the tea to put off what I thought would be slightly boring...how wrong was I! In all my sewing years I have clearly underestimated this stitch. Free machining is definitely the future!

I didn't do this one, Sally did. I haven't had time to take a picture of my masterpiece (zig zag) yet.

I made the first Bear for a kids class and I thought it was cute!? But I was told that it's a 'scary bear'. I wasn't going to give up though as I knew this bear had potential, it's easy to make, easy to make clothes for...I now have a selection of faces to choose from but I am finding it difficult to find the winning look. The purple button eye bear is not the scary bear by the way, even though that would be my first choice. Can you guess which one it was?

We started making our own bias binding, when I say we I mean me and Stephanie. Steph cut it out and I made the card. It's really effective and looks great, although time consuming and somehow feels wrong to cut diagonally through a perfectly good piece of fabric.

I've booked this class for Sunday the 4th of October 2009, if you would like to learn how to make this cushion. There will be a variety of fabrics to choose from so your Union Jack cushion will be original.

I know everyone is making Union Jack something or others, I just wanted to join in! I did use a bit of creative licence with the flag, apart from the fabric of course, the stripes aren't exactly correct. But I decided that since 'Traditionally, flying a flag upside down is understood as a distress signal. In the case of the Union Flag (Union Jack), the difference is so subtle as to be easily missed by many.' - Wikipedia - I didn't want to cause trouble. He he.

These felt balls were made a while ago, by my very helpful Mother (love you!). I'm going to include instructions in my new cupcake kits for how to make felt balls, because even though it only takes 5 minutes to make one...have you worked out how many hours were spent on this lot!

Since the Springwatch day out Soooo much has happened in our little shop! I don't know where to start, oh yes I do, Jane's lovely window display, mmmm, she's very creative. I'd love to sit here and talk at length about the fun we've been having but I don't have time. As much fun as it is having a shop, sewing still takes a long time and I've got lots of projects to do! Hope to see you soon and thanks for looking at our website.

This is my lovely banner that I stayed up till 1am Saturday night to finish...have you ever started sewing something and known from the start it's a bad idea because it will take ages, but somehow you think you will (this time) have time to finish it? This was one of those ideas. I should have looked at those 33 letters and thought no, you don't have time to stitch around each letter before the Springwatch festival tomorrow, just forget it and go to bed. Of course I didn't think that, I had to bring my sewing machine home, stay up late hunched over the sewing machine on the wrong chair hurting my back...mmm, I am complaining alot, I think I'm tired. It was my way of advertising the shop without cards, I thought it could be an environmental statement about not printing cards and wasting paper and ink, although I probably effected the environment by using electricity staying up late. It was made out of recycled fabrics though and surely that counts for something!  

My latest exciting news is that Sublime Stitching has arrived at Just Sew! We now stock patterns, kits, transfer paper, metalic and glow in the dark threads! I'm very excited! (But you can probably tell that from all the exclamation marks) I just want to make them all!! Luckily you can reuse the patterns up to 8 times. Like they say 'This ain't your gramma's embroidery!' Come in and have a look.

There are 20 different patterns to choose from...while stocks last.

On Saturday afternoon's we have a children's sewing class from 2pm - 4pm and it costs £10 including materials. It's for children 8 years and older. I teach kids from 8 years because they use the sewing machine and some hand sewing, depending on what we are making at the time. When they're younger than 8 it's difficult for them to use the sewing machine, but if your child is really keen to sew there are projects we can do that doesn't require them to use the machines. I have made a variety of projects with the kids and intend to work out a programme of what we are going to make in the future. At the moment though, we seem to be making alot of sock toys and other soft animal toys because that's what they want, but I'm hoping to move on to other projects soon!

This has been a very popular rabbit, I think it might be her jumper?

Soft animal toys inspired by the fabulous Bobby Dazzlers. http://www.theworldofbobbydazzler.co.uk

After lots of hard work the shop is open and operational...actually it has been for about 7 weeks, and like a new baby, I'm still counting the weeks. We haven't started advertising properly so I'm thrilled with the response we have had from people who have just been walking by. We have been deciding what classes to run from what people tell us they are looking for, so if there's something you're interested in please ask, and if we can't teach it I'm sure we can find someone who can. If you're interesting in sewing and textiles and you want to learn or teach please come and see us, we're always looking for new ideas and inspiring textiles and we love sewing because it's fun. I've heard lots of stories of scary home economics teachers, but don't let them put you off! You're older now and it will be much easier and quicker to get the hang of and we're really not scary...except on halloween, we love halloween. Anyway, I'll post new info about the shop here and hopefully meet you one day at Just Sew.