All items by Sew Quintessential

Personalised bunting and hand-stitched gifts, created using new and recycled fabrics

I’m Rowan, and I run Sew Quintessential, a small business specialising in making personalised bunting and handmade textile gifts. I love combining vintage fabrics with new pieces, or finding creative ways to use up odds and ends of leftover fabric, to create unique one-off items with a quintessentially English country feel. I work from my kitchen table in North Norfolk – although I must confess that when the sun is shining, I very often decamp with my stitching to the garden!

A string of bunting was the first thing that I ever sold at my very first craft fair, to a lovely lady named Vanessa who bought a pack and went on to commission me to make twenty metres of fluttery flags for her vintage china business. After that I was hooked! I love the fact that such a simple concept of fabric fragments strung from ribbon, can brighten and transform even the smallest of spaces; whether fluttering ethereally between trees in an orchard, bringing a pop of colour to a child’s bedroom or becoming a keepsake that comes out on high days and holidays.

I must also confess to being something of a hoarder when it comes to fabric and keep a magpie-eye open for pretty vintage pieces - faded florals, pastel polka dots and Milly-Molly-Mandy stripes are all my favourites. I was brought up with a 'make do and mend' attitude and when my children were tiny I started to design items that I needed from pre-loved fabrics to create pretty and practical one-off pieces; cushions and peg bags from my Grandmother’s curtains, hot water bottle covers from moth-eaten jumpers and attempted to re-fashion my old clothes into tops and skirts. I also started sewing gifts as a thrifty way to save some money so made lavender bags, strings of personalised bunting, colourful Christmas stockings and memory quilts using up all those outgrown baby clothes that you can't bear to throw away. After selling my work at local craft fairs for a few years, I have finally taken a leap of faith and opened my little shop.

With all my projects I use the sewing machine for speed and sewing basic seams, but I particularly love the control and freedom that hand-stitching allows – this is why I like to add hand-embroidered detailing wherever possible. I also cut out each individual letter by hand which means that each piece will be one of a kind and made with attention to detail. As many of my pieces are created from recycled or leftover fabrics, they are also sustainable and have been given a new lease of life.

Many thanks for stopping by and if you have any special requests, I'm always happy to work with you where I can.

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