OUR STORY

Pretty Fabrics and Trims was founded in 2012, by a mother (Penny) and a daughter (Sarah) with a love of pretty fabrics and a passion for sewing.  

Not many weekends passed when Sarah was growing up, when you couldn't hear the tone of a sewing machine in the background, with Penny hard at work.  It's no surprise that with Penny and her Nanny Flo's encouragement, Sarah started sewing at an early age, making clothes and pretty quilts for her dolls as soon as she could thread a needle.

Whilst she does have a small collection of sewing machines, including her very first which was handed down to her by Nanny Flo...it still makes the best button holes, hand sewing is Sarah's passion and she loves nothing more than sitting down with an English paper piecing, applique or an embroidery project on her lap, creating our next Pretty Fabrics and Trims exclusive design.

From our humble beginnings cutting fabric on Penny's kitchen table, our business has slowly evolved and in the spring of 2015 our ever growing fabric collection necessitated a move to our current larger, light and airy workshop based in a quintessential English village in the heart of Lincolnshire. This is where we carefully package all our kits and ship all our parcels full of loveliness, to customers all over the world.  

Since 2016, we've also been running our exclusive Subscription Clubs, including our Happy Stitches Journals.  You can read more about our clubs HERE.

Andy, (Sarah's husband) joined the PF&T team in March 2021 after 30 years service in the RAF.  After a swift training session on how to safely use a rotary cutter and having being introduced to all the pretties filling the shelves, he can now be found working alongside Penny daily at the workshop.

We were lucky enough to grow up surrounded by piles of pretty fabrics and being taught timeless needlework skills by our mothers, we know not everyone is so lucky.  In an increasingly pressurised world, we have always believed that having a needle and thread in our hands contributes enormously to our general well being.   With this in mind we made the conscious decision from the very beginning, to share our love and knowledge of sewing through free projects and 'little happy' tutorials, which can be found on out blog HERE. 

To enhance this in the Spring of 2023 we launched the PFT Schoolhouse website, which is where in addition to offering a growing selection of Sarah's pretty quilt designs as digital pdf patterns, you can also find a whole host of FREE Hand Embroidery Stitches and Patchwork and Quilting video tutorials, should you need a little helping hand to complete our kits and patterns.  Visit the PFT Schoolhouse website HERE.

We also appreciate how important it is to give back to the community, so we have over the years donated hundreds of metres of fabric to the hard working quilting charities: Project Linus and Siblings Together. 

Plus, to encourage younger generations to start sewing, we have given fabric and felt to local Primary Schools and to the Textile Departments at several Senior Schools in the area.

In addition, since 2020 we have a released an annual Christmas Charity pattern. These have included felt decorations and festive embroidery designs.  

To date, through your amazing donations we have raised in excess of £10,000 for our chosen charities.  You can find our 2024 Christmas Charity Pattern HERE.