Machine Embroidered Trees

[flick]

Today, I went to a workshop organised by Quilt Club to learn how to use my sewing machine to embroider trees.

It was very good. I learnt lots, including lots of useful tips, and had lots of fun playing with my sewing machine.

I did a couple of practice pieces and then went on to do a proper picture:





I'm quite tired now, though.

Comments

[dalmeny]

I'm impressed by the trees – were they fiddly to do?

[flick]

Less so than I expected them to be, once she'd shown us how!

[birguslatro]

So, small trees, or enormous caterpillars?

[clothsprogs]

Very impressive - The trees are nice but what I really like is the effect/texture given by the green piece across the bottom of the picture.

Teddy

[oreouk]

Cool! I like your landscape.

[juliet]

That's really cool! Is that just a regular sewing machine?

[flick]

Yes, just a regular machine but with a darning aka embroidery foot on it and a few tweaks to the settings.

(The same sort of set-up as for Free Motion Quilting.)

[juliet]

Ah, right. Neat! I haven't tried FMQ but it is on my "maybe at some point" list. I should start with something smaller than an actual quilt, though, I think.

[flick]

So. Much. Easier than stitch-in-the-ditch!

[juliet]

I hate stitch in the ditch but I've done diagonal cross-hatching which was ok? It's wonky in places but doesn't really show.

Ooh actually the last quilt I did, I did lots of freehand wiggly lines across it -- but I used that special foot that keeps the bottom in sync with the top and makes a terrible racket, and AIUI FMQ means having the foot lifted?

[flick]

Walking foot, yeah they're fab too! Basically, if you find yourself using a walking foot and thinking 'I wish I could make these lines a bit wigglier than it's really practical to do with the walking foot' then you want to switch to FMQ.

FMQ doesn't have the foot lifted (if you try that, you end up with a bird's nest on the back) but a lot of people are very insistent that you must have the feed dogs* lowered, which might be what you're thinking of. I have tried it both ways and found absolutely no difference, so I leave them up the whole time because it's fiddly to change on my machine. (Ditto with the embroidery class, in fact: the instructor told us that we absolutely must lower them but I didn't bother.)

* The spiky metal bit under the needle that pulls the fabric across the top of the machine. The walking foot acts like a set of feed dogs for the top of the fabric as well, so that top and bottom get pulled through at the same rate.

I think you do need to drop them with (some?) older machines, but with very old ones you can't and you have to cover them up instead!