Making it Personal

August 28, 2025

Making it Personal

Crafting Meaningful Details

My name is Christen Brown, and I am a Creative Spark Instructor and a C&T Author. And I am here to show you how to make your mark using your own personal style, and bring more you, to what you do!

In this lecture, I walk you through a series of techniques and practices that will help you to discover and nurture your style. Whether you are creating something from a pattern, a class, a book, or an idea from scratch, you can always take the project to the next level and make it unique by adding your own creative style.

Getting Started

In the first segment, I ask you to consider a series of questions as you are developing a project. I start with the simple basic questions, then show you examples of how I have answered these questions in my own work:

Do you have a favorite color, or color scheme?
Is there a type of fabric that you are partial to?
Do you have a favorite stitch or embellishment?

I move on to additional ideas that can be incorporated into your decision-making process. Such as ways to alter a pattern piece, either by cutting from a collage of fabrics rather than a single fabric, or to introduce unexpected materials, such as the measuring tape shown in the bodies of the birds above.

And lastly in this section, I give you examples for ways to think outside the box by taking a traditional block to a different level, by changing the color scheme, or the size and shape of the pieces of the block.

Creative Pursuits

The second segment is all about how you can create artwork from your own ideas, materials, and unique collections. Extra touches that can further be used tell the theme, and the story of the piece you are creating.

I talk about building a design around a collection such as linens, hankies, laces, ribbons and trims, treasured heirlooms, and old quilt blocks. Then I walk you through ideas for adding the unique, unexpected, and unusual, with examples for found objects, shells, sewing notions, or broken jewelry parts.

I also show you unique ways that you can use to add a personalized signature to your work. This could be an initial, or a special button that you use to tell everyone that you are the author of this creation.

Grand Finale

Lastly, I talk about finishing techniques and the final touches that you can use to take that project to the finish line. Thoughts? I have a few as you might have guessed!