Lessons

Lesson Info

Free Motion Foot: Thread Painting

Now one of the feet that I think is the one of the most popular that people love is thie free motion darning embroidery foot it's got a couple different names and I'm going to show you how to set up to do free motion sewing it just has so many applications and um could somebody get me my tote bag with the white tote bag with the flowers and here we go oh, perfect. Okay and maybe we could get this out of the way so we can show you some examples of, um what you can do with free motion sewing a term that I learned yesterday something is also new for me and it's just exquisite oh my gosh, this is so much fun this is and you know what to that pillow from the sofa that big with the real popular red one. Yeah, thanks, katlin. Great, great, great, great. Okay, so, um, free motion sewing what happens is we're going to cover the feed dogs so that they're not pulling the fabric anymore and we're going to put a special foot on the machine that when we so you put the president put lifter down it ac...

tually doesn't make contact with the fabric except for just momentarily when you're making a stitch and it's a very fast movement but because it goes up and down with the needle like this that's what gives you the opportunity to manually move the fabric around? You are controlling the movement of the fabric and some of the effects you can get with that just kind of tease you with a few examples and then I'll demonstrate the thread painting and this technique and also you can even do darning darning with it on darning holes and things but people are really into quilting there's a huge modern quilting movement going on in the country and everybody's kind of jumping on the quilting quoting trains so in classes here on creative live where people can go check that out in our perfect of life dot com slash craft perfect well, you can certainly do, uh those projects with your singer simple if you pick up a free motion during embroidery foot and this technique right here is called stippling and I'm going to demonstrate that for you and that's probably one of the most basic kind of quilting free motion techniques there. Um what we have here on this dress this was kind of inspired from something we saw a popular boutique uh is just a basic background fabric and we applied these with few zobel web we applied these shapes and then just free motion just kind of more less drew around them with the needle and thread to embellish them we did some tonal ones and we did some contrast ones thiss one here is we got we actually got the look of this it's like a shadowy apple k but really, what this is this is a white two space fabric. And this is black tool it's like a bridal netting. And we laid it down in here and just zigzag free motion around it and then straight stitch free motion to sort of fill in. So we sort of created our own lacey pattern. It looks just like something you'd find in an expensive boutique, and it was the easiest thing to do. And then here is thread painting on this tote and what we did here. Um, see if I find my piece where I put that. Oh, it's over here. One second. If you have your design, you can just sort of free draw your design. Um, with a fabric marking pen on your fabric like this. So you would just use one of these. You buy these at any fabric store, anyplace they sell sewing notions. And you would just draw your design on here just the way you wanted it. And then that would give you your road map for filling in with the thread. So it's kind of like painting with threat that's, why they call it thread painting. I'll demonstrate on one here that I've already gotten started on, that you can, so to see the process, where you you just begin stitching around it free, and then you just start filling in, I'll show you that it's so if someone wants to come and take these away, and I'll go ahead and change to the free motion foot and it started, so what we need to do here is not only remove the regular presser foot the way we've been doing by pressing that little button in on the back side, but we need to actually remove this ankle this whole ankle, so we're going to use a screwdriver and turn this little screw on the side and completely remove this ankle, and this is what you're free motion foot looks like and what you want to make sure when you put this on is that this arm right here needs to be resting on this. The needle clamp I talked to earlier when we talked about changing a needle this's your needle, this is needle clamp, and that your needle clamps screw this arm needs to be resting on top of this needle clamp, so we're going to bring this around from the backside, and you just have to kind of fiddle with a little bit till it's, sort of just lodges into place might have to just slightly turn your hand wheel a little bit to get it into position, and then sorry if my hand is in the way going to try to get my hand all the way as fast as I can here and then just tighten this up with a screwdriver, you have to turn to look at it that way, go and this one, because this mom this moves up and down with the movement of the needle, you can see how that's resting on the needle bar you want to make sure to give that a little tweak with the screwdriver to make sure it's on their securely, because that could work its way loose if you don't tighten it securely want to be on a straight stitch? We're start with the stippling like we did on those that poppy pillow we've done a little bit already on this step out of it, okay, so I'll just kind of pick up where I left off and do a little more so let's change to a white threads that they want that to definitely match and again, slider threat on use, the spool cap that fits in best, and we're going to snap our threat in here, bring our threat into that guide, make sure that take up lever is all the way up. Press it foot lifter is up and then we're gonna continue around. Make sure the I got the threat it did tuck the thread behind that one thread guide and now we can use thie needle threat or two thread the eye of that needle. Now what'll happen normally you've noticed, like when I put the presser foot down too. So the foot touches the, um touches everything but you see now it's free it doesn't touch until the needle comes down into the fabric thiss then comes down in momentarily they're all touching just for that moment. So that there's good tension for the stitch and then it releases again so I can move it's a very fast movement but it's touch moves, touch move, touch, move and the thing to do here people get really, really kind of, like freaked out doing this because you're in control. But it's actually, once you get the hang of it it's really a lot of fun and so let's, start over here and pick up where we left off. It was a good spot so straight stitch oh, we need to cover the feed dogs. I forgot about that the feed dawg cover plate that you had that commission came with that I put that seems to have slipped by me you're going to need your feet dawg cover plate I don't know it must have fallen on the floor something but for now what I'll do is turn my stitch linked to zero that will keep those covered from moving but you want to put your feet dawg cover plate on there I just must have dropped it on the floor and I can't see it right now but anyway I want to show you this technique so we're threaded we're ready to go straight stitch center needle position ok and no I'm just going to start to sew on and I'm moving coverage I'll stop to trim that tail so I don't drag it around with me because that gets a little irritating but no I'm in control and you can make this very dense you can do your stitching very dense you could make it more open the more dense you may get the more firm the finished product will be if it's more open it'll keep it softer so it really depends on the look you want for your project the trick is to kind of just take a deep breath and relax it's not it's some not difficult at all but a nice good moderate speed on your foot controller well you move with a good moderate speed with your hands if you go really slow on your foot controller and you're moving this around real fast here you khun break needles because you're jerking it around too fast for how much threat it's getting so the trick is to kind of go fast enough so that you don't do that. I think that's the biggest mistake people make is they don't so on the foot controller fast enough for how fast they're moving here, and then they bend and break needles, so just just give it some speed and then just enjoy it. I mean, it's, you want you want to watch that? You don't paint yourself into a corner, so to speak to you want to kind of be mindful of where you're going while you're doing this, but there's there's no right or wrong, it's, whatever you want it to look like. Just move it around. You can see what I'm doing here, keep my hands over the way and that's how we did get a free motion work on that pillow that I just showed you and you would just continue on the whole course of your pillow and then assemble your pillow or table runner or whatever you would want this to be now one really meet way to use that free motion with the straight stitch. I really wanted to show you this I think we have time is this is a little bridal pillow that we made. Of course the rings would tie onto here, but if you can see this is pedals from a flower, I just went to the craft store and bought flowers like this you know, those plastic flowers that you could buy on the stem and I have them here and then you pick them off of here and I just give him a little press on the ironing board and then you can take a fabric like this, for example, and then scatter all of your flowers onto your base and cover it with a tool. We're like a like the bridal netting kind of fabric and then you're free motion around those flowers like what we did here, you would just put this underneath like making a sandwich more or less and you would just put the presser foot down again, just stitching around those kind of outlining them to sort of trapped them in there and then when you're all done, you could take and actually lay some loose ones back on the top like we've done here and then just free motion in a circle around to kind of create a center and then when you're done, you've got a beautiful like heirloom gift to give someone in all it was was just free motion sewing on some may be small, leftover pieces of fabric and some netting and a flower from the fabric store okay, yeah, I love it. I ask you a quick question years on dh that is for bonsal girl and other people who might just be tuning in are these needles so they come with the machine or this is the sort of optional additional thiss the needles that I'm using this is just a standard size fourteen needle it's the one that came in the machine you get a package of just the medium average average needles I'm doing mostly like kind of quilting cotton here so the size fourteen is fine I'm sorry should I think also asking about the needle attachment so the foot detachment you mean the presser foot I'm using I'm believe. Yeah ok if it's the presser foot this is an optional one right for this machine um great things so then let's put that awkward threat on there and we'll do some of this like we did on that dress I'll show you how that works. Yes. From chiana I knew we were speaking earlier about the needles and just because he raised the question again you said with the bob and that we needed to get a certain bob and for this machine do you need certain needles? Are your needles universal's singer needles? We recommend singer needles versus other brands it's a good question and the reason why is singer needles air just a little tiny tad are there other needles I should say are a little tiny tad longer than what the singer needles are so even if you think well gee, I put one in the other day that wasn't a singer and it's so just find it may be ok for a while but after a while it's going to start rubbing down below and start it can start generating some problems for your not only you're selling but for your machine so even in your manual it says we recommend singer needles but they're just john singer needles you can buy anywhere any singer needles will fit your singer machine thie important thing is to have the right needle as we said earlier for the weight of fabric you don't you get skipped stitches from things like if you put a really heavy thread in a needle too small it won't even go through the eye if you put a really thin thread in a very big needle you could get skipped stitches it's funny but everything has to marry and you just kind of if you just generally think lighter weight fabrics, lighter needles lighter thread medium medium, medium heavy, heavy, heavy it's kind of a formula that generally works so so let's try this again no see I'm starting with the presser foot down even though this isn't touching when the needle comes down when I take a stitch you see how it just momentarily it does come down so let's go ahead and so are you something if there we go, that feels like it's not threaded right? So I'm going to double check that it doesn't feel right so I'm gonna try that again you can kind of feel it that you felt it felt it just felt really tight so I must have just in chatting like not pay attention and just didn't get it in there right? So it doesn't feel right just don't worry about it just when in doubt just re thread okay? It may be just got held up over on the edge of it feels much better now, okay? And threads too long and we'll start stitching so press her foot down and then we can just begin our thread painting again this go a little ways and just get rid of that tail so it doesn't drive you crazy and then there's no rules here just enjoy it it's like drawing with threat it's really, really fun once you once you get over the initial oh my gosh it's not feeding for me I'm in control. I don't know if I can do that once you get over that, you'll actually really want to do it because it's really a lot of money you want to make a center, you just go around and around and around so I think you have the idea there but I really want to get to that thread painting so I'm going to switch real quick and show you how to do that like we did on that tote bag okay, so here here's my design drawn on there and those threads I believe I put those right here here they are thes colors here so I think I'll start with this darker pink that's in the background so I can kind of start working on this flower that was back here and switch to the reon the round gives it a really nice sheen you don't have to use ray on for this in fact, if you want a really traditional heirloom look, you might want to use more of a mat thread because of course in the olden golden olden days they didn't have re on threat s so if you wanted to really look heirloom e maybe not not an array on but most people really like the rams because they're shiny and pretty you can even do this with metallic thread so then we'll put our fabric in here and this who is um it's a linen but we've added for free motion work we've added a stabilizer to the back just to help us keep from getting that puckering happening and here press a foot down and and we'll just start kind of drawing with our thread so just filling in you just take your time and just fill it in from this stop and trim that thread get that out of my way so I'm not dragging it around just take your time this this will take a little time because you're doing away a lot of stitching is in a small area to fill in you might want to even loosen your upper thread tension some so that it relaxes that thread that's all you're doing is just killing killing killing killing you could even change to zigzag stich if you wanted to but when you do that you want to mind your way with because the the opening on that foot is on ly so big so if you change to his eggs egg stitch I think I've my thread broke re through that when you change to a zigzag stitch you want tio make sure that you on ly go as wide as thie opening of that foot so you might want to check the swing of the zigzag the swing of this exact manually before you really start stepping on the controller to so uh if you put it at full with you might come over and crash the sides with the swing so just keep it kind of small to start and check it out on just feeling as you go probably doesn't like that with so bring it down a little bit it's a lot better see what I'm doing here and then you can just free back and forth with your zigzag and just fill in clip that thread so I'm not dragging it around and just feeling as you go he doesn't like that with either, so you're really just painting with thread see what I'm doing there I like jesus executive seems to fill in a more a bigger area a little quicker than a straight stitched it seems to take more time and you just fill it in using over it and over it and over it there's really no right or wrong it's however you want it to look but see how I started filling in just like we have over here and you would just take your time switch to your green threads you can layer your threads so you get the shading effect here's layering are pinks to get different effects in here with the red painting it's really a lot of fun you could do monograms this way could put your fabric and a hoop and draw like an a for you know and monogram and a and then set it for zigzag and then just guided along and do it with your zigzag stitch and do monogram ing with free motion it's really a very, very flexible you foot lets you do a lot of different kinds of things, so yeah