jumpstart
Follow your implulse to play with a technique that's new to you. Design planning not required! I didn't even know what or if I was going to make anything. I just wanted to drive around without a map and play with decorative stitching on my BERNINA L 890. Like ASAP ...because I needed some playtime. :-)
My thought was, if I don't like something I stitched I can stitch over it changing color, direction, etc.
I did carefully check my machine manual for threading thicker threads in the looper. I gathered up a small stretch of suitable materials (a lightweight fleece quickly fused to stabilize a leftover rectangle of quilting cotton). I wanted to try out some 12 wt. Aurifil in a looper with a 3 Thread Wide Coverstitch and a Chain. My initial palette thought was cyan, yellow, magenta, lime green and a touch of black.
Once the format was filled, I found a zipper, Mettler Metrosene polyester thread and some overlock thread all in a teal color. A new color for the palette, not quite the cyan I envisioned, but I will work with it. I added a backing (not quite the magenta I would have l preferred, but ok). At my BERNINA 8 Series, teal in the top needle for quilting a few lines, I used a triple stitch to show up more. See it above?
In the end, I straight stitched just inside the serged edges with a thread color to blend with the decorative area. I knew I wouldn't consistently align the edges perfectly, so a blending thead color would go largely unnoticed. To hold closed the wide serging, I suddenly thought of perhaps using decorative stitching on my sewing machine. The overlock edge thread had a little bit of welcome sheen to it. By matching thread color, the stitches themselves visually laid back; so you could focus on the rise and fall of the texture-in-the-sheen.
A braided effect, unexpected!
Had I thought of it earlier, I could have also done that before inserting the zipper. :-)
jumpstart and LEARN