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Embellishing Techniques for Bags and Purses: Decorative Machine Stitches

Half the fun of sewing bags and purses - or anything really - is adding some embellishment. It's like adding the the icing to the cake. It's the final touch that makes your sewing project really special. And for me, one of my very favorite embellishing techniques is...

How to Design and Sew a Slip Pocket for Your Bag

Slip pockets are easy to sew and are useful for holding and organizing small items in your purse such as cell phone, pens, glasses etc. Designing a slip pocket with sections is also easy and allows you to custom design a pocket to suit your own personal requirements....

New in the Store: Embroidered Scrappy Pouch Pattern

Let your inner rebel run wild and learn to enjoy "stitching in the raw". This embroidered pouch is the perfect small sewing project to practice your embellishing skills. Use your favorite fabric scraps and add some hand embroidery and machine stitching to create a...

New in the Store: Sally’s Bag Pattern

I'm excited to let you know that my new bag pattern - Sally's Bag - is now available for download! You can download Sally's Bag Pattern here in my Craftsy Store Sally's Bag has a fun and flirty shape with button embellishments on the front and straps that can be...

An Elegant Version of Sally’s Bag

One of the most fun parts of designing new bag patterns is making the samples, and what I've found over the years is that you can easily change the look of a bag to make it look elegant, casual or fun, just by changing the fabric, adding embellishments, and making...

Simple Tie-Dye Technique for the Super Simple Tote Bag

Last week I kicked off The Creative Cloth Bag Series with a tutorial for the Super Simple Tote Bag. You might not think that you can get very creative with a simple tote bag, but you would be wrong. Simple styles of fabric bags offer the perfect canvas for adding...

Turning dandelions into fabric art

Ever since I finished my Dandelion textile art piece last week - see it here - I've been in love with the shape of the dandelion that I made using bits of cotton scrim, so of course I had to continue and make some more. Instead of making another large fabric art piece...

Free Tutorial: Machine Needle-lace shapes using water soluble stabilizer

I recently posted on my Facebook page some beautiful textile art by Meredith Woolnough which was made using thread and water soluble stabilizer. While it looks quite complex, working with thread and water soluble stabilizer is really quite easy and a lot of fun, and...

Creative sewing in shades of purple: Dandelion emerges

It's often surprising what emerges when you work intuitively without a plan or design in mind. The cloth and stitches just somehow unfold their own story. This time a dandelion field emerged. I've used a lot of scrim in this piece in various ways. It has wonderful...

Creative sewing in shades of purple: a little handstitching

Progressing a little further with my Shades of Purple art quilt, I dyed a piece of fabric to use for the background. I love the yellow to purple gradation. Used as a background fabric, I think it brightens up the quilted layer which will be sewn on separately as a...

Hand dyeing, unexpected results, and how to calculate how much soda ash to use when hand dyeing

I did a little hand dyeing over the weekend playing with multiple colors and overdyeing which can produce all sorts of unexpected colors and results. Fabrics like these make great backgrounds or focus fabrics for art quilts. And if they don't turn out very well, you...

Creative sewing in shades of purple: machine quilting and emroidery

This week I decided to have a play with some of my hand-dyed fabrics in shades of purple. I chose a piece of purple fabric that was a little dull in color like antiqued or aged fabric and I've quilted it all over so that there is a lovely texture. Around the edges of...