Your Makes - Love at First Stitch Five Year Anniversary Special!

You may have seen Tilly’s first book Love at First Stitch has just had its fifth birthday - wowee time truly does fly! It’s Jenny here using this opportunity to celebrate the wonderful Love at First Stitch me-mades we’ve seen over the years. Nearly every day we find ourselves oohing and aahing over them and these are just a few of the goodies out there :)

Top left - Claire. Top right - Pamela. Bottom left - Johanna. Bottom right - @sharpneedles

The first project in the book is the easy-peasy Brigitte scarf. If you're new to using a sewing machine this is the place to start. Simple and speedy, this chic scarf will add the finishing touch to your outfit - just like Claire's mustard floral Brigitte. So seventies! Pamela is giving us nautical chic with her navy and red birds, and we love it.

Ohemgee Johanna, is this high-fashion polka dot scarf?! because *heart eyes*. We love how @sharpneedles (on Insta) has styled her Brigitte scarf, the bow looks lovely and so 1920s.

An Overlocker That’s Easy to Thread?! (Ad)

Overlockers (AKA sergers) are amazing machines for creating a professional-looking finish on seams and for whipping up garments in knit fabrics. Yet, when the subject of overlockers comes up amongst stitchers, it’s usually not long before there’s a sharp intake of breath and someone whispers, “Urgh, but I hate threading it”.

From talking to countless DIY dressmakers, I know that loads of you feel intimidated by using overlockers because of their reputation for being tricky to thread. Even those of us who use these machines regularly – me included – avoid changing thread whenever possible because of how time-consuming and fiddly the process can be.

A few months ago, Janome told me they were planning to release a new model of overlocker that is so easy it almost threads itself. As you can imagine, I got super excited as I knew this was exactly the kind of thing you guys had been dreaming about! So I asked to review it.

This is a paid review, but trust me when I say that this is my honest opinion – I wouldn’t recommend something to you unless I genuinely loved it myself and thought you would too. We’ve been using this machine in the studio for the last few weeks to stitch up samples (as well as our own just-for-fun projects at lunchtimes) and have fallen in lurrrrve…



How it works

Here’s a video showing how to thread it...

Five Ways to Use Up Your Scraps

Sustainable sewing is a hot topic at the moment and you might have found yourself questioning whether there are any ways you can make a difference in your sewing practice.

When you cut out your fabric, there will inevitably be some wastage. Many pieces can feel like they are too big to throw away and that there must be something you can do with them. Pattern designers will always try to be as efficient with the cutting layout as possible, but just as with RTW, there will be some bits that could languish in the bin.

As avid watchers of the Great British Sewing Bee, we really enjoyed the episode on sustainability and dressmaking. Patrick Grant said that 30% of all our fabric is wasted - wow! Our unused fabric scraps are likely to either linger in a drawer or end up in the bin. So what can we do with these little pieces of fabrics?

If you are looking for small ways to make your sewing practice more sustainable, we've pulled together five projects ideas to help you use them up these unloved pieces of fabric. You could prep a batch of pockets for upcoming makes (because every me-made needs pockets!), and bias binding to make your garments look as pretty on the inside as they do on the outside.

1. Make your own bias binding

Louise's Nora Dress with Cuffs Hack

If you're anything like me, making a pattern once is never enough. I am not satisfied until I have tried the pattern in a number of fabrics and attempted a hack. Can you relate?

It's Louise here, the Sales and Communications Manager at Tilly and the Buttons, sharing a Nora dress hack I made recently with added cuffs (fabric bought from Stoff and Stil). I am a serial hacker who just loves working with perfectly constructed simple designs so that I can have some fun putting my own spin on it. I'm not a pattern cutter, so find using my favourite patterns like the Freya pattern from Stretch! and the Stevie tunic make experimenting easy.



When Nora was being developed, I had loads of fun looking for design inspo and dreaming up all the ways this wonderful pattern could be made. As a result I have a wardrobe full of Nora tops (see just a few in this team blog post). I have tried it in sweater knits, viscose jersey, interlock, sweat shirting... but found myself wanting a dress version of this wonderful pattern.