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Free Motion Techniques and Flower Stitcher

I want to show you the free motion foot for the free motion techniques of staple quilting and thread painting those are really, really popular things that people want to know how to do with their machines, so well, we're going to set up for that by putting our regular needle back in, ok? And I'm going to clip both of my upper thread here and put this on straight stitch get a three threat, and so we can keep going no, for free motions, sewing, we need to change our presser foot, so we're going toe put on the free motion foot, and we also need to do one other thing, and that is to drop our feed dogs feed dogs are these little things right here that look like teeth, and when you have your regular press their foot on the machine and you're doing regular sewing thiss you may already know this, but if you're new to sewing the's feed dogs are what pull the fabric through so that you don't have to push or pull the fabric through so they with every stitch they did, they drop down, they come for...

ward, and then they come up to meet the fabric pushed the fabric through as it is in contact with the presser foot, then they dropped down to come and get the next bite full, and so when we do free motion sewing, we don't want those operating, we want to drop them down out of the way, and so to do that, I'm going to press this button on the back of my extension table to take this off of here for the moment so I can access my drop feed so there's, I'm just stand up for a second there's a switch back here that shows you when they're lowered or when they're raised and right now they're raised, so I'm going to push this lever to the foot off so you can see this when I push this lever to the right, you're going to see those feed dogs actually dropped down and so now they're out of my way one little tip about re engaging them if you've tried this at home and we often hear people say, when I put my switch back oh, nothing happened so they must be broken actually what you need to do after you switch that back and this is true of any of our machines that have this is then turn the hand well one complete revolution to re engage them so again, you see them drop when you when you drop them, they drop out of the way when you re engage them for regular sewing just turn your hand real one complete revolution to reengage them that's completely normal so anyway, we want them dropped right now because we want to so free and the other thing we need to do is remove the, um, ankle normally are presser feet we've been using so far we are sometimes it really tight this machines right out of the box so it's a little might be a little tight there we go. Um, take the ankle off and replace it with the emotion foot that looks like this when you put this on the machine. What you want to watch for is that this arm rests on top of the needle bar if you have that going underneath the needle bar when you put this on it's not going to sew properly for you, so you want to make sure that this is seated properly on here and if you have to just kind of wiggle your hand well a little bit to get that just in the right spot for that, um piece to clamp on tier presser bar then just do so and then we're going to tighten that screw back in place. I'm sorry if my hand is in the way that I have to do it this way have no other way to do it and just tighten that screw till that's all the way and you want to just make sure it's really well seated on their on and I always extra tight just give it a little extra tweak with my screwdriver so it doesn't work it's way loose well, I'm stitching there see it wasn't quite seated properly suggests wiggle it a little bit to make sure it doesn't that it's on all the way you can kind of feel it after you put it on once or twice you know what I'm talking about? There we go so we're all nice and secure on there now what's different input and you can put your extension table back on the machine two after you've done that, you don't have to leave it off so now what's different about sewing free motion as compared to regular sewing is that when you go to so normally when you put your press afoot lifter down your foot comes in contact with the fabric to draw through, but you see here that's not happening my press afoot lifters up now and it's down now and it's free because right now I'm in control and I'm going to be moving this around and I know that's a scary thing for some people at first, but before we begin doing that, let me show you some of the effect it's of this so I will need some of my free motion samples like my pillow and those dresses that we made if someone can bring those over for me and I'll show you kind of where we're going with this technique because you can do what we call stippled quilting you khun do thread painting and so on so thank you great and so what we have here is the probably the basic example of free motion is the steeple quilting this meandering kind of stitching that you see on this pillow so we had sonar seems for the quilt with a quarter inch presser foot that's available for your machine as well but then we went around with the free motion which are going to demonstrate for you here in just a moment and then we can also do things like uh like more or less kind of drawing with the thread so in this case this is address where we just put some flowers on it similar to how we put the heart applicator onto the heart fabric with that we did a little bit ago and then with the free motion we just move the fabric around as we wanted to sort of just meander around and fill in these areas to create this uh design inside the application tapes that we put on the dress another example is this this one it's a completely different look it almost looks like a lacy pattern in the dress but what we did here was this is a bridal illusion or an illusion fabric it's a little finer than regular tool but it's the same concept as what tool is and what we did was we laid the piece on here and straight stitched around it and of free motion straight stitch around it and then stop and cut up to that and then go back over it set the machine for zigzag and free motion zigzag around it to capture the raw edges of the illusion and then put it back to straight stitch to draw in here and fill in and create this sum effect inside the shapes and the end result it looks almost like a lacy phil on the dress so another thing you khun dio and demonstrate this is well is just put stuff that down there thiss might a tote bag where we've done some thread painting and this is where we just drew our design on the base fabric and then you just use a your hands to guide your fabric and you're literally painting with the thread insight with kind like coloring inside the lines but using your sewing machine and thread instead of a crown so I'll show you how to do that I've got another example or two is well to show you for that and that is I really like this idea is this is a little bridal pillow project I had done one time and it has sort of three dimensional effect but what I did was I had a base fabric like this and I just went to the craft store and got a silk flower and I just pulled these off and steam them a little to flatten them down a little and lay them down on the base fabric. It doesn't have to be tonal like mine is you could have, you know, ah ah white silk with pink flowers or whatever you want to do, it doesn't have to be a bridal pillow. It could just be a pillow pillow. It could be the skirt of a little girls dress. I mean, anything you want to do with it, you lay a piece of tool over the top and then we're free motion like I have on my other step out here to show you I just like to bring step out because sometimes I don't have time to do everything, and then we just meander around with that free motion technique to sort of capture the belief, shapes and then in the center's, when we're all done lay a few of those loose petals on top. In this case, we used a bead to sew them on, but here we just went in and went around and around with free motion to do that. So that gives you some ideas of what you can do with free motion sewing, so actually what I'll do is also on this quilted piece here this looks a lot like the pillow we started out with and what you would do is just place your fabric underneath the foot and again now, where most people people get really nervous about doing free motion work, and I think they're the reason we get a little nervous is because we just don't understand how to how to mom, how to approach this, so because sometimes you get a little nervous, you tend to so really slowly with the foot controller, but you're trying to move the fabric around, and then it gets a little kind of herky jerky, and you get where you're probably bending and breaking needles because you're really not giving it enough speed with the foot controller to just move freely and guided around. So what you want to do is I'm just going to take a stitch or to toe get started so I can trim this thread. I don't want to drag it around with me as I'm going there we go, so, um, give it some gas, step on the controller and give it some good speed press make sure the presser foot lifter is down because sometimes you think it's down it's not because it doesn't touch, so make sure that's down and then just give that since give that some speed and then just move with your hands at a moderate speed, but don't push, push, push, push, push and move it real fast. Just take your time with it but give it some good speed of the foot controller and you'll have more consistency with your stitching and just take your time with booth it's really? A lot of fun and you just meander around like that. Now you can have your thread bland contrast whatever you want it to look like if you if you did you're stitching very, very densely it would give your finished project a little more firmness. This is very open, so it keeps my my fabric soft. I havea warm and natural batting and here, but you could use something a little thicker if you wanted more loft to it. It really depends on the look that you want but basically what people want to know is how do I set up my machine for that? And you need a free motion durning embroidery foot and then you drop your feed dogs and just give it a nice good speed on the controller as you move moderately with your hands. Now that same technique we can use on the, um the example I showed you with this um so I have my I guess I'll just use this one here um let's, do the rest of that flower there and I'll put this I had a piece that I thought I could use the white thread on, but I don't know where I put it, so go ahead and change my thread to the to the green here, and I'll show you how to how to do that quickly thread with that's with smart threading and clear my threat out of the way that we go. And so now here again, kind of no writer wrong, just whatever you want it to look like, and we'll just start drawing with the thread I like to usually do a couple of stitches, tio trim my thread tale there was you tend to want to be dragging that around, and that gets a little annoying. There we go and just continue on nice speed with your foot controller don't be scared of it. I just don't want to go super, super fast with your hands like I don't want to go like this with my hands I want to just take my time is if I go real fast like that, I probably will break a needle or bend one for sure just take your time. When you get up to that center, you can just go around and around like, so come on, back up and say, I think I'll come over here and do this one and I think you get the idea there very, very fun very very easy it's no right or wrong with it it just how it looks very organic and very fun all right and then I'll show you that thread painting so let me change to a pink colored thread and I'll demonstrate how we did that see here what we did was we used one of those you tell reid started earlier in the day with it but I thinks my pink threads didn't really match very well but you get the idea what we're doing here we took our fabric marking pen and we drew our design on the um trying to find a thread I used but I guess it's just not here I'll grab something that's close and uh we drew our design on the base fabric and if you don't like here drawing skills, I mean you khun do fabric transfers, you know that's another way to get fabric designs on fabric, but once you're done drawing your design or applying your designed to your base fabric, this is kind of like coloring in between the lines. So if we wanted to continue maybe filling in one of these flower petals over here definitely use a stabilizer to when you do this on the backside of your fabric tears away when you're done, but it gives us a little extra stability so you're because these stitches get really, really dead it's when you go over and over and over and you don't want puckering on your fabric and that stabilizer will help eliminate that but all you have to do with the presser foot down and begin stitching and I like to do a stick stitch or to teo capture my upper thread and then just continue on and you just go back and forth back and forth again you notice I'm giving this a nice speed with my foot controller but I'm not going I'm not I'm not going really fast with my hands or jerking it really fast just just taking my time and you're just feeling it in with red ok and that's essentially how it's done so um there's an attachment I'd like to show you it doesn't come with your machine but it's available and you have such wonderful little stitches that can really give you some more creative options if you use what we called the flower stitcher and I know it's a little strange looking, it looks like the starship enterprise a little bit but it is a great little tool and I do have a instructional video on that two on our singer website on how how that actually applies to the machine and so on but which is great which is just a singer co singer cole dot com like singer company yes and I just re engage my feet dogs so they're back up I turned that hand well toward me one revolution and I need to take this free motion foot off of here now where we're going with this while I'm well and getting this free motion foot off and getting ready to put the other one on I had a lamp on the table here that has designs all around it over some flour called kind of application thiss this attachment doesn't make for flowers even though it's called flower stitcher it takes stitches and puts them into circular shapes and we used those circular shapes around the lamp shade on top of flower type of application is to do that embellishment that you see on that lamp shade so here we are back at the machine and this attachment goes on similar similar to how it explained with your free motion foot where this rests on the needle bar so does this one okay? And this is where it's at clamps on to the presser bar just like this one did so they're quite similar that way it's just more going on with this one, huh? On the rest of the foot so let's, go ahead and slip this on you might have to raise or lower your needle bar up and down to get that to sit over the top there and then we're gonna sorry if my hands in the way but I I don't have any other choice I've got to get getting here and put this screw back in hey come on there we go and you can turn that with your fingers turn turn turn and then when one sits on their pretty well you want to use your screwdriver to just give that a little a little long extra tweak no um here on this attachment there's a screw adjusting screw on the back side here and there's a pronger or a little tongue here and what we want this this pronger or this tongue can move less or more along this range you can point it anywhere between these markings here on the stitcher and what that will do is it'll just the size of your circles as it goes to the smaller size it would give you like up here on my lamp shade it would give me like a little smaller circular areas and if I move it more to the plus I get these bigger the bigger circular areas and you can go concentric circles you can actually even do this with a twin needle we show that on our tutorial as well but let's just experiment with that a little bit because I know where kind of getting close on time and I've got a just because you definitely want to use a stabilizer for this as well this usually looks it's really best when you use those nice thirty weight thirty waiting twelve wait cotton threads you get a riel almost embroidery hand embroidery look to the stitching but we're gonna put the presser foot lift her down and let's just start with um I'll just start with a multiple stitches exactly let's start with that one and as I so you're going to hear this click click click click, click, click click that's totally normal you'll see it as its inaction but that's that's how it sounds my foot slipped just could clip my thread here out of the way now I'll remove this you can see what I've just done it makes this wonderful little flower shape um you could sew buttons in the middle after you're done or beads you can even I'm going to do this one again and I'm going to show you you can even go when you're sewing it. Once you've made a complete revolution all the way around, you can just keep going around and around and around to make it look thicker and fuller um, you just really need to experiment with it because as you mix threads as you try different stitches a different settings on the machine if there it's going to completely change the way they look scallops stitch looks wonderful with this blind hem stitch works well with this serpentine creates a really unique effect would be surprised if the fec so you get here it just it's sewed right over itself and I got it a little more enhanced. Look from that same stick because it goes right over where it's so yes, it's. So cool that people in the chatter are loving this and I'm actually watching it on myself sitting here so I can get the details. What is that foot called again? It's called the flower stitcher or flower stitch attachment cool. That was for abby lynn. Yes. Yes. So let's try a different stitch so we can let's try the blind hem stitch so I'm gonna pick that one and I'm gonna widen it out a little bit. Completely different. Look, it's dragging my threat around so it's probably going to affect the way this looks so trying to get rid of that I think you'll get the idea I'm trying to hurt because our time is almost up way so to blind him earlier right on this skirt you saw with that sketch looks like and look at here wade just did a blind hem stitch and look at how different it looks now. It's crazy. I mean, you have so many even though you say well, I've got, you know this twenty some stitches here to play with, look what you can do with them and mixing threads. And now this was at its widest. We can actually loosen this adjusting screw here on the back and move this prongs so it's at a smaller setting. And yet we have a downloadable pdf sheet is well on this on our site. Um, to show you how to do that let's, just do that. Slant slant over edge, let's try that one. Just try different ones. You never know. Sometimes the ones you think are gonna look crazy. Um are aren't gonna work. They turn out to be the coolest ones yet? No, this is a slam over edge. And what? I'm going to show you in just a minute. You're going to get really excited. No, this this is a really small circle because I moved the problem over to its smallest setting. And I'm doing a stitch that's just meeting and center each time it goes to the left. But now it's completed its cycle. When I pulled that out, you see what that looks like? Here's? What we did on a pillow here to do. We did that same technique on this pillow and all this is is a silky fabric background, and we took it. I think this is two notes, three layers of a silk organza and they're just circles and when I cut them, I just took them if I can try to do it with a piece of just some scrap here. When I had these three layers together, I actually just kind of took him like this and made a little pinch. And then I put that down on top of my fabric and did that stitch right over the top. And I got this effect of this pillow, and this looks every bit like you'd pay really major bucks for eta at a home decor store. So if any more comments on that one that you are we getting, I'm just having so much fun with people who are in the charity because they are just a loving this. Oh, good. They're feeling like their creativity can go everything that you, khun dio and really appreciate seeing the examples that you're showing. Yeah, because sometimes you look at it. Go. What would I do with that? I also got what I did one time I used a thirty weight and twelve wait cotton's in different colors and I just took, um, blacks and aqua is and reds all over a cream colored fabric, and I put different flowers all over it. I created fabric texture and made a just a clutch purse out of it, it was adorable.