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Stitches and Applique

One of the most popular feet andi accessories that everyone loves to work with is the satin foot and your machine did come with a satin foot and the reason that and that's mainly for satin applicator and here is why you want to use that when you do applicator as opposed to your uh general purpose foot which is the one that comes on the machine your general purpose foot is for construction so it's flat on the bottom side because the when the foot goes down on the fabric and the fabric is making contact with the feed dogs that's what's drawing the fabric through so you want as much area on the foot coming in contact with the fabric and feed dogs as possible the problem it presents when you do satin stitching and what I mean by satin stitching let me just I got a couple of examples back here here's here's a tablet case said occurred because I was telling them in the earlier class my given name is rebecca so here's a tablet case with my other initial on it and just mirrored to be a little ...

artsy but this is a satin stitch here and you can see it's really a zigzag stitch that's very dense same thing here is on this stalking here is applicator on the top of the stalking and this is silk do peony uh cotton fabric here but this is thesis atten applicator to apply these pedals here's a little bit of metallic thread right here and here's a little bit of some top stitching with your even feed foot if I have time I'll show you that one as well so um the reason this stitching when you look at it it's very, very, very dense and so if I try to sow those dense close together stitches with an all purpose foot on dh you maybe had this happen to you you've tried it the stitches start bawling up in front of the foot because you want them to in most cases you want them to be very close together and and not see fabric between them and that means bringing your stitch length down very short and then when you do that you can get this balling up in front of a foot that's very flat on the back side so when you change to your sat on foot you turn this over and the bottom of it actually has a channel or a tunnel or a groove or whatever you want to call it but thiss is an area where then these dense set these dense stitches can actually pass very freely as you saw as opposed to your regular foot and it's transparent so you can actually see your work as you go so it's kind of doubly good that way as opposed to using your regular foot for satin application let's try a little bit of that so we're going to so a little heart here's another example of applicator to got my initial on everything, don't I, um but this is satin stitch applicator to and here's what that would look like before the stitching and here's how it would look afterwards we're going to sew on this little heart, so to do that you're going to place a stabilizer on the back side of your fabric and, um this place the satin foot on the machine and I'm going to use a white ray on thread for my stitching so let's place that up here and I'm going to use the smaller school cap I got three with my machine, so we use the smallest of the three snap that in here thread the machine the presser foot lifters up that's great, but I can tell that school already catching down there so let me put a little bit bigger one on and see if that helps I was feeling it being obstructed already, so you want to make sure that's feeding freely off of there if it's falling down between just switch to a different size and make sure it goes in that take up lever, tuck it around that thread guide hears that needle thread her again and automatic needle thread her and we're ready to start our sat stitching and I gotta draw up that bob and thread I changed to a white bobbin on the break because I had a kind of dark colored brown brownish one in there, and here we go for all set to go trim my threads. Now you'll want to try this on a scrap. I'm I'll just do it in the margin of the fabric over here, but, um, you want to try on a scrap because there's really no writer wrong lengthened with for satin stitching? It really is dependent on the look that you like for your project. It might depend on the size of your application. If you have a smaller applicator, you probably want a little bit narrower zigzag if you've got a really large application might want a wider stitch, so it really all depends on that. So you want to just selectors, execs stitch, which is stitch number three on our single digits? Call him here and my comes up at whatever length I had last selected for it, so I'm going to bring it down to a shorter length. I'm to try this zero point five and and and the and bring the width down to about a three, and just have a look at that and see how that looks that might be a nice place to start, and then I'll adjust from there, depending on how would this what this looks like? So I'm sewing along and I can already tell it's maybe a little more open than I wanted and maybe a little narrow, so I'm going to, um, widened that out just a bit and bring that down just one click on I'll run some of this and then I'll show you the difference and just as soon as I lay a few stitches down so you see the difference here I started out with this, but I could see too much fabric in between the stitches and here it's, much denser and much more solid looking that's what I think I like from my heart he wanted to go wider. You could even go up to like a four point oh, on your with it's, really? Just whatever you want, but let's, go ahead and start sewing around the heart we'll start down here at the point and what happens when you so a cz I was mentioning to the group this morning said as you zigzag, I call it like to the left is the zig and the right does this egg so as you zig zag zig zag over your stitch, what she really are after is it kind of zigs into the applicator, and it zags just off the edge of the peace that is the applicator so you don't want to be like having your stitch just catch over here and then have the right hand swing of the needle go way into the area on the main background fabric how you want to have your stitch kind of enclosing the applicator just going off the edge of it so we'll start stitching this I'm going to just put the needle down and start so we'll try to get myself out of the way so you can see now this area that we're sewing on right now is a bit of a straight away so I can just guide this along feeding this manually just slowly the stitches are really close together so I can just take my time and curve this along. But as I come up toward the upper part of the heart, I start to get a little more curve here and it might be especially in the case of this heart. It's uh um ah, very sharp curve so I want to stop with my needle down and this is where you have a really great feature on your machine you have a programmable needle up down, so when I saw and said the needle always stopping in the opposition, it will always stop in the down position wonderful for applicator it's a great feature this machine as I so it stopped on the left side. I just kept my foot controller again to make sure it stops on the right than I can lift and I can pivot a little bit and then continue around my curve. And as my curves starts, getting steeper can stop lift, pivot, that needle up down is really the programmable need. Look down is really a great asset in the case of application stopped it with it down again, and you just proceed around here. But when you're doing these outside curves like this, you want to stop with outside curve. You want to stop with the needle and the right. If you were doing an inside curve, you'd stop with the needle and the left. For example, if I was to stop right now in the with this in the left position and then I lift and pivot, you can even imagine that I'm leaving like a little v over here on this side, and I'd have, like, a little gap showing on the side of my application. So you want to make sure that you always pivot that with the needle in the down position on the right for your outside curve do your little pivot and then continue around so you proceed around your heart that way and I think because we have so much to get to, I'm going to stop right there but I'll press it again to raise the needle up by tap tap the foot control it stops in the opposition and you can see we have this beautiful satin stitching around the edge of our heart and if you and then when you're all done you just go on the back side and you just tear away your stable of years your stabilizer and you're um got your application no um speaking of that programmable needle up down another thing that that's really nice for is when you want to got an example here of if you were sewing I won't take time to do it now but you can just imagine I guess well this has already been stitched but stitching along and your sewing a pocket and you come down to the corner of your pocket that needle will stop in the down position so that you can stop like that and then you can it's like a little placeholder so you can pivot and so around your pocket every time you stop here you can pivot that by having that programmable needle up down it will always stop with that needle in the down position you don't have to turn your hand well to make it go down into the fabric so that's another really great asset of that programmable needle up down feature ok so let's proceed with well here's some other just interesting ideas for apple cake I'll show you here's one where we used one of the beautiful pin stitches there's a pin stitch in your machine this one is number twenty you can actually use number eighteen or number twenty one and you would have to bring the width and length to your liking it would depend on the size of your application but here we did this apple and instead of a satin stitch like we did on the heart we actually went around it with a stitch that goes like this and uh and you get a little bit more of an organic or kind of a little more casual style of applicator we did the same thing with these flowers but what was a little bit different here is the apple was a raw edge like the heart wass the's were pieces that we actually cut them out turn them under and we used a that stitch to just capture the the edge as we went around it so this edge was turned under and the other was brought but it gives a completely different look than a satin stitch you could even use one of your by using a thread that blends in with the uh fabric it kind of tends to disappear where here it's a little more contrast e really kind of depends on the look you want so you need to experiment with that and just depending on your project that's your that's your satin foot ok um some other examples can would you mind grabbing me that pillow there on the side that that wavy pattern here sat stitching is not just for application you can use it to embellish fabric actually, a lot of your stitches are used to embellish fabric can actually get that black and white one two that's really cool um sometimes people say you know you get all these wonderful stitches in your machine all these beautiful built in stitches thanks and folks say what would I do with all those stitches? I can't even imagine well here we just took one stitch this is your stitch number fifty eight and we just ran row after row after row of it on the fabric and we completely textured this fabric this is just one stitch just repeated over and over and look at this fabulous texture I just love this and this black and white it goes with everything it goes with everything so it's funny I said it earlier but when you have all these stitches to choose from, you start looking at things in the stores differently I just can't I sometimes just go shopping to just get ideas for projects because you think about all these stitches you haven't where you could use them here is just a simple example of the satin stitch we used around the heart just sewing it in a wave so what you would do here's a piece of this silk and you can just use a fabric marking pen or pencil depending on your fabric and just draw your line you don't have to free it free motion it you can just you know guided kind of winging it you can draw your line to sew on your fabric and speaking of fabric markers here I have two different kinds with me and you're going to want a collection of a few of these for different fabrics he worked with and different colors of fabric so this is a chalk pencil which would be great for a silk but this one is white and I would never see my markings with it so you might want like a blue chalk pencil or something like that I can we'll get silk wet so I didn't mind using this wash away marker but there's some fabrics that you don't get wet and in that case should want to chalk pencil and have varieties of colors depending on the on the fiber content some of these pens like this particular one as I said it washes away so in order for that come out you actually have to maybe get a cloth that stamp and kind of blocked that out or wash the fabric there's some kind of lavender colored ones that they're different colors, pinks and so on but they're actually air soluble and they go away in just a little while on the fabric so you wouldn't wanna mark your fabric in the evening, go to bed and then get up and start sewing because in the morning your lines would be gone so those air the air soluble ones and this is a water soluble one so you want to just check the labels on those but it's nice to have a variety of those again depending on color of fabric and fabric type and so here we can just change our thread are tough. Yes quick question that was from fabric quarter in the chat rooms on the last when you were showing us how did you get the applicators stick to the fabric for four? Still okay. And she said, I'm learning so much thanks back oh yeah, you know, I kind of did a lot just cause I knew our time was so short I had those pre prepared but at the fabric store you can get, uh if usable web is sort of the generic name for that stuff pelon makes one called wonder under there's um one called misty fuse it's a little bit different, but they all basically what they are is you put your application on, then you take something away, plait place it down on the base fabric, actually susan's class that you were talking about earlier. She showed how to do that. So you know, that's an option too, but it's it's just if usable web and the instructions there on the paper on the bolt. You know, you've probably seen him in the fabric stores, and they'll tell you how to apply that on there. Yeah. And just if people weren't here earlier, the class that we're talking about is from susan beale. And it is a class for all these beginning so on projects, and you can just search for her name. But she did a lot of application that one rate. So here's here's, our satin stitch. Now, in this case, like I did on the pillow, this probably will what we'd probably want this one a little wider, and then all you have to do is just follow your line. I want so this whole thing in the essence of time, but maybe that's a little, too. Why don't get on to a four again? I would use a a tearaway stabilizer on the back side. They come in different ways to get very lightweight ones and firmer ones. If you're selling something heavier, they're all available. Fabric stores is the brand and spira there's hell on their sulky thiss state stabilizer could be a whole class by itself. But I think you get the idea here that satin foot let's, those dense stitches passed freely underneath there. And that's how we did that stitching on that lovely little pillow that we had here just a moment ago. So want to move on and show you another really neat stitch on your machine. And that is your hand. Look, quote, stitch that on your machine is stitch number two and it looks a little funny. Like, you probably have wondered what that is. It looks like three little lines and then a line. And then three little lines in a line. Well, what that does for you is it creates a stitch that looks obscene. Message that looks like this. Um, we're going to demonstrate on this one here, but here's an example of a heart applicator with that little blind stitch. Applicator and then we did this echo quilting around the edge with the hand look quilt stitch it looks like hand sewing up and down with a hand needle and thread, but that actually was done by your selling machine. So the way that that works, I've just got a bunch of things here I want to show you I got them all. Grab a ble. So, um um, believe it or not, what you do to set up for this is you're bob in is threaded with the color that you want to see on the top side. I know this sounds crazy, but hear me out here, it's we've already got her applicator placed on here and in your needle goes the thread that kind of disappears into the fabric. So when you choose stitch number two was just girl through till I get to number two, I hear, and it'll pre select a length for me, but as you can see, I can make the stitch longer or shorter if I prefer. And the top thread is the thread that looks like the skip, if you will. And then when it does this part of the stitch that's, the bobbin thread that actually the machine brings the bobbin threat to the topside for a series of little tiny stitches to create what looks like a hand stitch so let's, go ahead and do that because this has this has a lot of really I mean, if you're a quilter, you would love this because it's save you a lot of time it has the look of hand hand quilting so let's place the future bob and I've already prepared it for for sake of time and we'll drop that bob and into the machine goes counterclockwise into this those guides and then in the needlework and I'm going to put thiss white thread now some if you if you're if you are a little bit familiar with the stitch you may have heard people say, oh, you should use a excuse me a l see if I can find it here quick ah monofilament nylon thread in the needle and I tend not to like to do that I find that the stitch actually forms nicer when I use a regular thread than a bond a filament cause he's tend to stretch a cz you so the other thing is they have a little bit of a sheen to them and so that might reflect a little light and if you're using this for quilting, you use irons at really high temperatures and that might not be good for the nylon thread, so for all those reasons I tend not to like a monofilament for the needle for this technique but rather a thread that just completely blends in with the top fabric if this is a print or some kind of multi color, you might just try to find a fine wait something that just blends in with it. Well, just lay it out and see if it kind of looks like it disappears, it will be fine, so we'll put that white thread on our needle. Snap that in again, take up lever and highest position, press a foot up, make sure that's in the eye it is and then we'll thread the ibooks thehe missed it. Do that again. Sure, needles in its highest position when you do that, the reason you want to do that to make sure needles all the way up. If it's down, that little pin that comes around could crash into the back side of the needle and it might bend and then it won't work anymore, and you'll have to have that read the little mechanism at the bottom here replaced, so just make sure that's up all the way when you use your needle threat er we're gonna draw up our bob and thread, so I know this is crazy, like, how is that bob and threat gonna show on the top side, but it will slider cover on, okay, and then we'll start sewing and I may have to adjust my stitch length I'm not really sure if I got this set right where I wanted so I can play with the length, I'd probably practice on a scrap first, but for sake of time here, we'll just go ahead and go sometimes it's helpful to increase your needle through attention to to help pull that bob and threw it up a little more. You can just play with that. It might depend on the thickness like I've got batting in here might depend on the fitness of your materials, but can you see those little picks already starting to happen there? If it's not quite showing, just play with your attention a little bit going increase mice, stitch in length some to get a little more of the longer look that I have here it'll make come a longer steps in between each stitch you can really get that tow look the way you want it to and you get these this hand pick look what's cool about this, too. I've done some projects with the handler quilt stitch that see here, my threads a little darker. So this was a lighter pink, but I think you get the idea I've done some projects where I've used, like navy blue fabric and it's kind of the opposite, I had white thread in the bobbin and the navy blue in the needle. And then it pulled the white thread to the top. And it looks almost like that japanese sachiko technique. So rather than having to go out and get some fancy sachiko style machine, you can just use your hand look, quilt stitch to get the look. Especially if you're just going to do a few projects now and then with it, you know, and that's, how you do, handle cold stitch. Okay, so let me. I'm going to switch to a I mean, show you a foot that does not come with your machine that you might like to invest in and that's a button sewing foot.