Sewing with Disabilities: Five Accessible Tools (Guest Post by Samantha Purple Sewing Cloud)

There’s a whole world of amazing sewing tools out there that have been designed to make your crafting easier. To celebrate Disability Pride Month, we’ve commissioned Samantha Waude from @PurpleSewingCloud – who you may recognise as a Tilly and the Buttons model from Make It Simple and Agnes – to share her top five accessible sewing tools. 

Whether you consider yourself to have disabilities or not, you will want to get yourself some of these! Over to Sam…

“Hi, I’m Samantha, I’m feel very excited to be invited by Tilly to write this guest blog post about my top five sewing tools. 

As a sewist with disabilities, my sewing tools are very important to me. Over the years I’ve curated a collection that works best for my needs and disabilities - without them I wouldn’t be able to sew and create a beautiful wardrobe of clothes that make me smile.

I’ve chosen my top five tools that I use every time I sew and are essential to me. These tools will work for everybody too, not just for people with disabilities - so keep reading or watch my video!

How to Embroider Flowers on Your Clothing

Have I ever told you how much I love embroidery? I find the process itself so soothing, and the perfect way to unwind after a long day. And the result is such a pretty way of embellishing both ready-to-wear and me-made clothing to make them truly special.

Ever since I first designed the Marnie blouse sewing pattern, I’ve had the idea in my head for a version with a flower-embroidered yoke – earlier this summer I turned this dream into a reality.

If you’d like to create a similar effect, I’m going to show you how to embroider flowers on your clothing. This tutorial is simple enough for embroidery beginners, and will teach you a few different stitches along the way – lazy daisy stitch for the petals, French knots for the centres, fishbone stitch for the leaves and back stitch for the stems.

Confession: I’m not the world’s neatest or most patient hand stitcher, but I adore the result regardless. So, even if you’re not the most confident embroiderer, I’d still encourage you to give it a go!

[In the intro I accidentally said "satin stitch" but I meant "fishbone stitch" - oops!]