This week we are continuing with our celebration of National Sewing Month with f!un collaboration from Evy Hawkins, owner of A Bit Of Stitch. She's designed a few machine embroidery designs for the Sew Powerful purse and is here to show us more about the project! So exciting!
Here's a little more about her...
Evy lives in sunny South Carolina with her husband and Kitkat, the feline resident who actually rules the roost. She is the proud mama of three wonderful children and a gramma! She has been sewing since she was a child. During the course of her career, she has been a couturiere (specializing in wedding and evening garments), a women's wear designer, a freelance embroidery designer, the owner of a little fabric shop, children's wear designer/manufacturer and a graphic artist. Today she stays very busy and quite happy designing and digitizing her own line of embroidery designs and creating projects, patterns, and other fun stuff! Evy's favorite machines to work with are made by Baby Lock. She is especially fond of their new Sashiko machine and their needle felting machine, the Embellisher.
A long time ago, Evy had a dear old Irish aunt who taught her the love of sewing by making her exquisite things for her dolls and showing her how she did it. She learned that "shark tooth" stitches were not acceptable...only tiny little even backstitches would do. Sometimes when enthusiasm got in the way of neatness Evy's auntie would have to remind her "little stitches, Evy dear, just take a little bit of stitch!" The name is in honor of this sweet talented lady, and a reminder of how kind teachers can inspire us to do good things.
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I love that her story ties back to sewing doll clothes at an early age! I have to agree, it's the perfect way to learn to sew and perfect your skills!
I met Evy at the Baby Lock tech event a few weeks ago. her enthusiasm for the Sew Powerful project is such a blessing! I'm super excited to see this project come together and even more excited to bring her in to share her knowledge with you too!
Are you ready? Let's go...
Evy's created a full step by step post showing how to make the Sew Powerful purse flap and pocket in the hoop! You can download the design files directly through your Pixie Faire account, you will find them in the SWC Bonuses section. They’re free and include:
- Two flap designs, one with all-over stippling and one with cross-hatch quilting. The flap designs measure 7.49” x 10.31” and should fit in your 8x12 hoop.
- The pocket, which is intended for the inside of the purse, measures 4.25” x 6.76” and will fit in your 5x7 hoop.
Now, if you don't have a machine that does embroidery - don't worry! The post also shows a few ways to use your machines decorative stitches to add some beautiful design detail! Evy has used a darling flower stitch on both the binding edge of the pocket and along the length of the purse strap!
Resources:
Download the Sew Powerful Purse pattern. The beginner level pattern is in the SWC Bonuses section.
Interested in doing this at the tiny doll scale? We have a doll size pattern available as well!
Week Two Task:
- Click the link to see the full blog post that Evy's created.
- Download the machine embroidery files from the SWC Bonuses section.
- If you have a machine that works with an 8x12 hoop, try out one of the Purse Flap designs.
- If you have a machine that uses the 5x7 hoop, try the pocket project.
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If you don't have a machine that does embroidery, try out a few different decorative stitches. You can use this idea on the parts of the purse mentioned, or simply use the technique along a hemline or waistline of a doll clothing project. I used a similar stitch on the waistband of the Lightning Ridge Top, it's one of my favorites!
- Jump over the SWC Facebook Group for conversation and project sharing.
Connect With Evy:
I encourage you to explore the A Bit Of Stich website! When you're there be sure to sign up for her newsletter - she mentioned that she'd include a free surprise in her Friday newsletter as a thank you for signing up!
There's a fun section on the website called "Try It Tutorials". That's a great place for ME newbies to start as they are lots of little projects that teach a specific thing about machine embroidery.
Be sure to check out the other posts on the A Bit Of Stitch Blog. Most of the posts are an extension of her classroom, so there's lots of good ME info there and it's all free! Some is aimed at Baby Lock users, but all can be applied to any make of embroidery machine. All of the embroidery designs include step-by-step instructions and lots of ME hints and tips. And there's sewing projects too!
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Evy lives in sunny South Carolina with her husband and Kitkat, the feline resident who actually rules the roost. She is the proud mama of three wonderful children and a gramma! She has been sewing since she was a child. During the course of her career, she has been a couturiere (specializing in wedding and evening garments), a women's wear designer, a freelance embroidery designer, the owner of a little fabric shop, children's wear designer/manufacturer and a graphic artist. Today she stays very busy and quite happy designing and digitizing her own line of embroidery designs and creating projects, patterns, and other fun stuff! Evy's favorite machines to work with are made by Baby Lock. She is especially fond of their new Sashiko machine and their needle felting machine, the Embellisher.
