From Scraps to Door Snake

Most of my sewing time is spent quilting on the long arm. But sometimes I get to do custom sewing projects. My favorite thing about sewing for non-sewers is the huge variety of requests. Their ideas take a lot of imagination, a fair amount of research, and plenty of trial and error. Perfect brain exercise.

One of my repeat clients messaged me a few weeks before Christmas about making a door snake for her daughter’s drafty new apartment. She even had links to show me her vision.

This one for color:

This one for “personality”:

When I asked her how she would describe the personality, here’s the response I got back: "I think that snake is definitely friendly, almost flirtatious, but a little shy too, and also wise.  I think her name is something like Millicent. "

Here’s the snapshot of fabrics my client ended up approving:

With orders in hand, I set to work bringing to life a shy and wise snake from a stack of fabrics. As it turned out, Millicent let me play with the quilting on her back, but she was very particular about her eyes. They took a few tries but finally she was happy.

Meet Millicent.

 

I can't wait to see pictures of this sweet little snake in her new habitat.

Free Motion Couching

When Carole at work pulled Brother's Free-Motion Couching foot off the wall, I was excited to give it a try. I'd had so much fun with Bernina's version of the foot with Fat Quarter Quilting. (Do you remember the can cozy from our Superbowl Sunday Make & Take?)

If you've never tried Free-Motion Couching, it's a fun way to add texture to a quilt, and it's very forgiving with regard to stitch length. The foot is a clear quilting foot, with a tunnel on the side. You thread a yarn through the tunnel and down where the needle goes. Then you thread your machine like normal: thread in the bobbin, and thread in the needle. As you free-motion, the yarn gets sewn to the fabric, and the needle thread all but disappears.

Here's testing. The purple cords were a good idea, but they turned out to be either too stiff or too thin to work well. The yarn worked the best (probably because I followed the recommendation in the foot's instructions and used a 4-weight yarn).

Here's the little project I used it on. (Not bound yet, but that'll happen, eventually.)