Brighton Sewing Centre Blog

A little history

When we took the wall down, one half was covered in old wood paneling, that was covered in really bad wallpaper. But when we steamed the wallpaper off we found some old posters.

Amazingly preserved, we've left it there for future generations to see, along with the beautiful fire place.

 

We've been changing our shop

On the bank holiday weekend, back in August, I had this great idea to take a wall down in our shop to get more space. Well what alot of work that was!

Saturday night and all is still well at Brighton Sewing Centre, all sewing machines were safely tucked away downstais.

My friend Bernie was very helpful, you could say he did most of the hard work.

It was a very long and messy day.

 

But at the end of Sunday we found a brick wall and an amazing Victorian fireplace that had been coverd up all those years ago.   On the Monday we were so busy I didn't take any photograph, until the end of that day

 
Actually this was the Tuesday, we did open but only briefly, as we needed to put coving up which was incredibly messy and head scratchingly complicated for all those involved. 

   
This is the view from the counter, after a lot of work the shop is ever so slightly wider, wide enough to have things in the middle. Now you won't feel like you're walking into a bowling alley with us at one end waiting to help you. You can browse leisurely at all our lovely things and hide behind the DMC threads for a bit of fun.

I love seeing sewing where you'd least expect it!

Like in the wine shop!

Embroidery on a bottle, that's progress!

Inspired by City Quilts

After seeing this red and white quilt in the new City Quilts book by Cherri House, I was inspired to make this quilt

 
I was so excited I went ahead and then ran out of fabric so it will have to be a sofa quilt for the kids. I'll have another go with a bit more forward planning!

Nice Buttons

We have some lovely big buttons in the shop at the moment

Some very big red with white spots

And some very small coloured with spots

We also have a bag full of wine gum buttons, you can't eat them but they look great!

Small orange sample quilt is finished!

And I did it all on the new Janome Horizon sewing machine! Did I mention we are having a Horizon event day? Let's talk about the quilt first...

It is only a small quilt so I thought I'd have a go at free motion quilting and it's really fun! I had to concentrate though, if someone tried to talk to me my loops went a bit pointy.

I was really impressed with the stitch quality on the front and back.

There's alot of space to move your work around on the Horizon and it really makes a difference. But don't take my word for it! Next Thursday 12th August 2010 we are having a Janome event in our shop. We will have 6 new Horizon machines in the shop and Ruth from Janome will be here to show us how to make something using the Horizon. There is a session at 10am and then 2pm and at this event you will have the opportunity to buy this lovely sewing machine for the fantastic price of £1249 (that's a £500 saving!!), so if you've had your eye on it why not come and have a go on one?! It's definitely worth it!

Making a sample quilt

As I venture into quilt making, I'm finding it not as easy as I'd hoped! I consider myself quite good at sewing, designing and choosing fabrics but when it comes to patchwork I may be overthinking it. My Mum is very good at patchwork and she has told me that it all just goes together...not for me. So in an attempt to improve I've made 6 Ohio Star blocks, using the same fabrics in different combinations to see the effect of different fabric placement. Then I placed them on different background fabric.

So I started with the brown

Then Blue background

pale pink

pale pink and I moved the blocks

I liked this because the top row look like crosses and the bottom row like stars. In the end I went with the orange as it was more vibrant and I looked at a small bias edging..

and a wider edging, but I went with the small edge. I'll put that image up later though.

 

 

I find it easier to look at them when they are tiny like this, I think because you can't see how busy the fabric is you just see the patterns.

We're moving downstairs

In the last few months we've been slowly moving some of our classes from Just Sew over to the downstairs of the Sewing Centre. At the moment we've had the teens, a hen party, a patchwork group and our embroidery machine software classes there. I'll show you some photo's soon but you could always come and see for yourself if you're in Brighton.

We made apron's for the hen party and they were lovely, it was a 3 hour challenge though, not the 2 we had booked!

Super stylish apron from Patchwork Style: 34 Simple Projects for a Cozy and Colourful Life. There are lots of things I'd like to make in this book!

Blue machines on window

We've spent so much time changing the inside of the shop that we have hardly had time for the outside! It's not exactly in our best interest as sadly, people don't notice us when they walk by. But these lovely blue machines are the start of our endeavor to improve the look of our shop, it's Jane again, she's so clever! It will take a little while and I am slightly impatient, we just have to sell more sewing machines!

Speaking of sewing machines...my new favourite machine is Janome Horizon...mmmm

This has to be the best thing since sliced bread! Having access to so many lovely sewing machines I'm getting slightly spoilt and my machine requirements are getting more refined (or expensive). I have had a computerised Janome for about 13 years now and it's still going strong, so I'm used to things like needle down button and locking stitch, both of which I can't live without. Now it seems I can't live without an inbuilt cutter, a start/stop button and a speed control. I do love technology and I like things that save time. I love making things and sewing takes time, so if I can save seconds off my sewing technique I'll do it so I can make more stuff! Simple really, this Horizon machine has everything I need and more, extra lights, fantastic set up for free motion quilting, more fancy stitches than I'll ever need, and a Big space that you can get your hands in and move your fabric around! I still love the old machines and the basic machines and the nostalgia that goes with them but when it comes to equipment and tools...I want the future!!

New fabrics arriving

We've had some lovely new fabrics in and hope to get more, as you can never have enough fabric!

Tilda of course and more Tilda

Then Michael Miller not even opened yet

I think I was hungry when we put this order in as 6 of these relate to food! They look better out of the plastic...why not pop in and see for yourself!

We also have quite alot of plains

and other stuff!