Needlicious Designs is a business being run by a busy woman who thought she needed one more thing to do. I’m Rae. I am a wife. My husband happens to be an ordained minister. We have six children, three girls and three boys. I first started learning the techniques of sewing when I was 9. Both of my grandmother’s sewed. My mother sewed many, if not all, of my clothes when I was very young.
I fell in love with quilts and quilting when my mother gave me a quilt for one of my birthdays when I was a teenager. While she did not make it, she had it made for me. It is made from all the scraps of fabric of the clothes she made for me when I was young. I love this quilt.
My grandmother smocked many dresses for me and my female cousins when we were young. I learned to smock shortly after my first child, a girl, was born. I was blessed to have my grandmother living near us when our oldest was born. I asked my grandmother to teach me to smock. She taught me to smock without pre-pleated fabric via a pleater. We washed and ironed the fabric; placed it out on the table and with a measuring tape began making perfectly spaced dots in nine rows across the entire width of the 45″ fabric. Then she showed me how to gather it and block it. I was exhausted before we even got to the part about learning the smocking stitches. But I did it and I am glad I did. Thanks to her I have not only a greater respect for the older pieces of smocked items, but a much greater knowledge of how smocking works. She also taught me to smock this way without drawing up the pleats first, but to create the pleats as I smocked. I completed those projects and then wasn’t sure if I’d ever have time to smock again; they took me a long time.
Then one day I met a wonder lady who is now one of my best friends in this world and she showed me this little piece of equipment called a pleater. I was in heaven. As soon as I was able I had one myself. I then became “a smockin’ fool,” as I was referred to because it was just so mush faster and easier to turn out smocked projects.
My grandmothers, my mother, and the old stand by Home Economics class taught me more basics of sewing by machine. My grandmothers were well versed in crochet and knitting and taught me those techniques as well.
Over the past thirty (plus) years since I learned my first stitch I have learned many hand sewing techniques. I have spent many an hour cross-stitching, needle-pointing, crewel, silk ribbon embroidery, basic hand embroidery, and French handsewing. I have taught classes on many of these techniques as well.
So (I really resisted using the word sew there as a pun), Needlicious Designs is what I do; it’s all forms of needlework. Partially what I’m in the mood to do, partially what others have asked me to.
Do you have a question for me? You can reach me at Needlicious [at] gmail [dot] com or click on the contact button at the top of this page or you can just click here.
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