I'd love more info on fabric art and decorative stitching
 

Fabric art that uses decorative stitching, cording, ribbons, etc., has always caught my eye. I'm thinking of taking a class on Craftsy called, "Stupendous Stitching," by Carol Ann Waugh. (They're having a 1/2 price sale on some of their classes right now.)

Is anyone else into fabric art and surface design through fabrics? I'd love more info about it. What kind of machine do you use? What are the various materials that you work with? I have a Singer 403A. Would this be a good machine to do these kinds of projects? Thanks!

~ Cindy

Never care much for art quilt. If the class is on sale, I would sign up and take it. Just be careful because I heard when the classes are on sale, you only have a limited time to access the video.

I have about 20 classes from Craftsy, purchased over several years, and all purchased on sale and the access is lifetime. Not aware that they have changed this. iQuilt, while new to the game, also offers lifetime access, regardless of whether it is on sale. I think there is more time-limited access to classes when an Annual Membership is involved, in my experience.

I love embellishments. I have a Viking and the dealer offered a class a couple years ago called 'playing with your feet'. You were supposed to bring whatever trims and feet you had at home, and they let you use all the feet in the store. What fun! You can get a lot of bang for the buck just using a couching foot, which is available for most machines. You can couch braid, trim, novelty yarns ribbon etc. You actually can just use a zigzag foot, but a couching foot has a groove on the bottom to handle the extra bulk. You can use an unobtrusive thread and let the couched material be the star, or use a decorative thread & stitch and enhance it. Most machines also have a pintuck foot available. Another foot I LOVE is my cording foot. Not sure if this would be available for your machine. Here's a pic of the one I have. http://www.thecolorfulworldofsewing....na-Viking.html. It has holes in it, you thread multiple thin cords thru the holes and use a decorative stitch to hold them down. The only foot I didn't like is the beading foot. never could get the beads to thread correctly. Just attach them by hand.
The only time that a Craftsy class is available for a limited time is when they have the specials where you pay a single price and can take any class you want, but they are only available for that month. If you get a class on sale, you have full access for ever.

find a machine dealer doing the Stitchers Garden BOM. Great way to tiptoe into new techniques...one block at a time. Teaches lots of different machine feet, decorative stitches. Is your machine older? I googled it and it looks like it is. Did not look like it has a lot of decorative stitches on it.

Sandy

I think that stupendous stitching is a really fun craftsy class. It inspired me to play with the stitches on my machine and was more about that than about lots of fancy feet. You know how so many of us have these wonderful machines with hundreds of beautiful stitches and we use about 10 of them, this class is the cure.

I believe you are talking about Crazy Quilts. They are super fun, and you could do a version of them on a vintage machine as long as you are able to do a zigzag stitch. It's a zigzag in either a monofilament or matching thread that holds the decorative elements down. With my Singer 353, I use a zipper foot for narrow bulky items like yarn or piping and a walking foot for flatter items like rickrack. There are many 3rd party feet for the older Singer so perhaps someone has made a cording foot by now; that would make it easier to apply. The other thing you can do is to try is bobbin drawing. I've never been brave enough to try that, but I was able to run a 28wt thread through the top to get a more pronounced stitch (beautiful in a zigzag over seams). And, of course, you can always add a bit of hand embroidery (or find already embroidered fabric to cut up) to really make it fun.

Wanted to add that there are newfangled machines that will do all of that stuff with specialized programs & feet & whatnot. Some machines have hundreds of decorative stitches to choose from, have feet for applying all the decorative elements easily, and will even do computerized embroidery & stitching. While those are definitely nice, there are plenty of lovely projects that can be done on vintage machines -- as were the original crazy quilts.

PS - The Craftsy Class you referenced, Stupendous Stitching, is not compatible with your machine. Those are all pre-programmed stitches on fancy embroidery machines & higher end computerized sewing machines. If you have at least a thousand dollars to spend on a machine, I'm sure members would be happy to make recommendations. :)

I took a class called Stitchers Garden. It taught me how to do some great work with all those decorative stitches on our sewing machines. A good class to learn what these machines will do. If you can't find a class on it you can buy the pattern. The pattern is very detailed and it's amazing what you will learn.

Oops, sorry tropit I didn't realize you were using a straight stitch machine. Definitely not a useful class for you. You might want to look to things using free motion embroidery if you like the thread work. I love doing free motion work and have made some fun projects on my straight stitch machine. Bobbin work and couching might also be things to look at for machine embellishing.
Terry White makes lovely free motion embroidery projects and has a craftsy. class http://www.craftsy.com/user/1186523/projects

If I am not mistaken, your 403A had 9 stitches including the straight stitch. You can definitely do the Stupendous Stitching class with that machine. You won't have all the decorative stitches that CAW uses, but you can do lots with what you have.

I took the class when it first came out and only had my old Brother VX560 machine which had a total of 9 stitches plus straight stitch and buttonhole stitch. I used the various utility stitches and modified the length and width to get some neat effects. I enjoyed the class so much that I made several pieces on that machine.

Once I decided that I liked using the techniques she showed, I bought a Brother PC420PRW from Amazon.com for under $400 including shipping. That was 4 years ago. You can now get them for even cheaper. That machine has a couple of hundred stitches. You do not need an embroidery machine, nor do you need a machine costing thousands of dollars. For even less you can get some of the Brother machines that do decorative stitches but have a relatively small throat space. Check out Walmart etc.

I have recently had a show of my work in a local art gallery. All of the pieces used similar techniques to those taught in Stupendous stitching and were made either on my VX560 (9 stitches only) or on my PC420PRW. I also did some free motion quilting and bobbin work on a couple of the larger pieces on my PQ1500s (straight stitch only). I was lucky enough to sell some work and also to have another gallery owner to invite me to put some work in his commercial gallery. So you see, you don't need an expensive machine to successfully do the techniques that CAW teaches in Stupendous Stitching.

Rob