Drawing - with my sewing machine!

  I love my singer 201K, and my new 66K too! I have spent a bit of time over the weekend cleaning & oiling the 66, as well as reading up about care & repair of vintage machines. Scrolling through the videos on YouTube by Alex Askaroff - vintage machine guru! - I found a video demonstrating how to do free motion embroidery on the 201. I thought WOW I just have to try that!

The video shows how to lower the feed dogs( which I did not know how to do!), remove the presser foot, and then sew. 

I found the biggest embroidery hoop I had, some calico,& had a quick practice. 

 Tricky - you have to have the machine running fast, but move the fabric slowly. I played around with the tension & then decided to have a proper go. 

I had already printed out a couple of embroidery designs from “ Sew & Tell” - digital sewing magazine from print mag “ Peppermint”. I used my trusty carbon paper again, & traced 2 of the designs onto some calico.

This is the first one - blue wren. 

Rosella - finished, and in progress. Tricky but fun, have to concentrate & move slowly. 

For the final picture I drew a sewing machine outline, then added some decoration as I was sewing.

I will definitely be doing more of this! Great combination of my love for sewing/ creating/ drawing!

So many ideas - drawing/ colouring a picture first, then sewing over to show the outline; using lots of different coloured threads, stitching on coloured fabric…I think I have found my new favourite craft!