Chapter 4 – Decorate with Stitchery

So with the fabric and yarn prepared it was time to stitch –huzzah!  I’m a big fan of running stitch.  I remember back to my level 2 C&G where I made a couple of kanthas.  So I decided to begin with spirals of running stitch.

Image 1:

Image 2 – couching, running stitch and blanket stitch with different yarns:

Image 3 – couching sparkly yarn on a monoprinted fabric:

I have two sewing machines both of which get the hump whenever I try to free machine on them.  They become a bit like a dog wearing a medical cone collar when I put a darning plate on them (I can’t drop the feed dogs).  They become moody and refuse to do what you want.  I picked the less stroppy machine and managed to talk it into at least trying.

Image 4:

Image 5:

You might have spotted that I don’t have a foot.  My machine didn’t come with one and the instructions for free machining in the manual don’t comment on the safety aspect at all!  It took all my concentration but I (mostly) managed to keep hold of the hoop with both hands and not get a pierced finger.  I have done free machining so I realise going faster is better but as you can see from the stitching here I took it slowly as otherwise the machine says “woah!  no way!”.  The results are pretty rubbish but I rejoiced that the machine vaguely did it.

Image 6:

Image 7 – a few spiral attempts.  They started out well but degraded as time wore on:

Image 8 – I secretly like the bobbin thread looping through.  I did try all sorts of tension combinations (and checked the bobbin tension) but alas I always ended up with loopy bits after a while.  I embrace the loopy.  Sometimes you have to):

Image 9 – the next one started out quite well (or so I thought):

Image 10 – But when I turned over it wasn’t so splendid.  I quite like like the loopy bits though!:

Image 11 – I carried on regardless (but won’t show the back as it was a dreadful mess and the needle kept getting caught and at one point got stuck in the darning plate!):

I had a conversation with Siân at the summer school about machine embroidery.  I know that I enjoyed it when I’ve done it previously (on a lovely workhorse machine!) but my machines make it a painful experience I try to avoid wherever possible. 

Having said that…. my main machine took to cording like a duck to water!  More about that next.