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.)