Brother Sewing UK

Located near Leek in the Staffordshire Moorlands, The Lorna Knight Sewing Academy offers countless sewing machines, haberdashery, fabrics and workshops in a picturesque location. Workshops, machines and haberdashery near Leek After running sewing workshops in church halls, museums and shops for over 15 years, I decided it was time to have my own base, so in July 2014 I opened my studio in a barn we renovated in the Staffordshire Moorlands. Starting with six Brother sewing machines and four tables for workshops, the studio filled up quickly with even more sewing and embroidery machines, haberdashery and fabrics - so much so that now, five years later, we are busy converting the next part of the barn so we can spread out further and increase stock. My husband, Stephen, joined me in the business 12 months after opening the studio. As well as ordering haberdashery stock and buying fabric he received excellent training from the Brother engineers and is now qualified to repair a...

In my last blog, I mentioned how much I enjoyed making bags and purses of all sorts. I like to create with all sorts of materials, and that means – like most sewists – I have a lot of scraps to show for my work!  I'm a firm believer in using scraps, and above you can see some Abraham Moon tweed offcuts which I have made into a couple of little zip top coin purses with the aid of my trusty Brother XP1/Luminaire. I hope this brief tutorial inspires you to have a go too! Step one Select your scraps – for the purse on the right, I decided to use some of the one-inch pieces I had and applique them on to a five-inch square of tweed. The left-hand purse was another scrap of blue tweed which I decided to applique along the top using a heart design. Step two So, off to the Design Centre to select one of the built in shapes. I selected a simple circle but you could use a heart (as I did in the second purse) a leaf, a square – whatever you like. As I look at this picture n...

Building on the embroidery features of the Innovis XV machine, the Luminaire XP1 extends the number of sewing and character/decorative stitch patterns that can be used on the embroidery side of the machine. On the XP1 you can combine, mirror and resize different stitch patterns, using them to create all sorts of projects. One feature I particularly like is using button holes in the embroidery hoop so I can ensure I achieve perfect placement on my clothing (shirt plackets) and home decoration projects! You can find the character/decorative stitches in section 5 on the embroidery screen, as shown: The character/decorative stitch section is divided into 3 categories: ·          01 Buttonholes ·          02 Embellishments ·          03 Decorative Stitches As you will see, there are many styles of buttonhole available to use in your embro...