OUR STORY

Penny

Sarah

Andy

Pretty Fabrics and Trims was founded in 2011, 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 encourgement, Sarah started sewing at an early age, making clothes and pretty quilts for her dolls as soon as she could thread a needle.

Hand sewing is Sarah's passion and she loves nothing better than spending her evenings and weekends with an English paper piecing, applique or a hand stitched project on her lap, working from one of her many sketches or paintings.

 

 

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 monthly and quarterly Subscription Clubs.   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.

 

OUR PRODUCTS

All our kits, clubs and patterns are designed in house by Sarah and meticulously packaged by Penny and Andy.  

We thoughtfully and carefully curate our products cherry picking from the finest fabrics possible including Liberty Tana Lawn™, quality WoolFelt® and threads, plus our favourite buttons and trims.

Our embroidery kits include gorgeously soft linen/cotton fabric, which is pre-printed with Sarah's hand drawn designs.  This is proudly printed for us by another UK based family owned business.  We also work with various other small UK based micro businesses who produce our acrylic templates, the majority of our English Paper Piece pre-cut papers and our wooden notions.

Everything we do at Pretty Fabrics and Trims has and always will be, designed and put together with love and great care and only released once we are 100% happy!

GIVING BACK

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 Stitch 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 £5000 for our chosen charities.  You can find this year's Christmas Charity Pattern HERE.

 

For daily snippets and updates, you can also find us on Instagram and on Facebook... and don't forget to sign up for our monthly(ish) Newsletter!

Finally, as a small family business we sincerely care about everything that we do, as well as believing in good 'old fashioned' customer service, our family motto is "treat as you would like to be treated", which should mean that you are always 100% happy. If EVER this is not the case or you have a suggestion on how we can improve the service that you receive, please do let us know, we love to hear from you!

Our very best wishes & happy stitches

Penny, Sarah & Andy