Margaret Tully Sews

This past weekend Margaret Tully taught a class at the Sewing Garret in South Daytona.  As always, she was delightfully entertaining while she teaching her students fabulous techniques and tips.

I was unable to stay for the sit and sew portion, but snapped these pictures of some of her inspiring samples.

Margaret is best known for her serging expertise, but she is equally adept with sewing.  The creativity and variety of her samples shows just how diverse her talents are.

In the heirloom area, she has two sweet baby bibs, both made from mitred, hand hemstitched cocktail napkins.  One is simply and elegantly edged with tatting while the other is machine embroidered.  Both have silk ribbon woven through the generous hemstitching holes.

This small crazy quilt has amazing embellishments. She couched ribbon threads and other fibers on a block and then cut it into quarter rounds.  They were then joined to the block corner, as you would on a Dresden Plate block.

The fabric selection is just exhilarating.  The striped border around the blocks gives a brief moment of order.  Then the little quilt seems to vibrate before your eyes.

Her construction is flawless, but this vest shows that Margaret just cannot leave anything alone.  Rather than a nice, simple vest, she has created a lattice for one side and even included a climbing vine, complete with leaves and flowers to affirm the trellis suggestion.  I know my 6 year old granddaughter would love this.  Gosh, I would love this!

Another small hanging features machine embroidery which seems to match the border fabric.  Margaret’s cheerful text selection is perfect for this piece.

The red ball fabric is applique’d in place and then machine embroidery stitches reach across the width of the balls.  I love Margaret’s choice of fabric for the balls.  The textured look gives the ornaments convincing dimension.

As you may know, Margaret is a Babylock educator.  She showed features of the new Symphony quilting and embellishing machine as well as the upgrade for the Ellisimo.

Babylock’s sashiko machine was on display in the shop, but Margaret did not demonstrate that.

Still, it is clear that she is well versed in its use as evidenced by this little potpourri bag with sashiko stitching.  I hardly believe Margaret would have done this by hand, though it certainly looks like it.

One of my favorite samples was this Christmas Eve placemat for Santa’s snack.  Margaret traced the outline of her Lenox Christmas china so that the plate would fit perfectly.

She added a coaster for Santa’s milk and even embroidered free standing cookies to be in place until the fresh batch is out of the oven.  The placemat is backed with a simple black quilted fabric and serged around the edges.  This is just darling.  I bet my granddaughter would love to make this.

Margaret showed samples of a wonderful  technique she introduced at a Martha Pullen school when we were teaching the Babylock school together.  Margaret had a daygown, sweet as pie, stitched in the heirloom style, all batiste and French laces.  But the piece de resistance was the embroidery between the button holes.

She used decorative stitches from the sewing side of the machine and colored in portions with pigma pens. 

The samples she showed in class had been shaded with colored pencils and a variety of other media.  How exciting is this?

For those with or without machine embroidery capability, tiny little decorative embellishments can be made without the bulk of thread.

Margaret’s ideas just keep on coming.  Don’t ever miss an opportunity to take a class from her.  Thanks, Margaret, for all the inspiration.