Learning something new (machine applique)

Hello, everyone.

At the monthly meeting of Sewing Club (so called here) we learned about machine applique--one of the members had requested it--and carried nascent projects home to complete.

In the process, I learned more about my older sewing machine, a computerized Kenmore that is actually made by Janome.  There was a sampler of stitches made:

View of the front of the stitch sampler, with the stitch numbers written by the rows

The reverse side, with both sets of sample stitches showing.

The sampler's orange-plus-white rows were done first, and the orange bobbin thread pulled up to the top of the fabric. (Also the zigzag row tunnelled a lot because there wasn't enough stabilizer underneath.) Thinking it over, I realized that I'd used shiny embroidery thread on top, with dull regular thread on the bottom, and they just aren't the same weight and stiffness of thread. I switched out to a bobbin loaded with the blue shiny embroidery thread and the stitches were a lot better.

They did still pull through a bit--even though the thread tension on the top thread was loosened.

I settled on the "star" or "snowflake" stitch for most of the work, and one of the "buttonhole" stitches for the part of it that just wouldn't work out well with the stars.

The top side, stars around the ironed-on heart. Note the basting stitches holding the two layers of stabilizer to the underside.

This is how the stars came out on the underside.

 The button hole stitching, apparently, missed its date with the camera. It was put on the edges of the ironed-on letters spelling a name. There were just too many and too sharp of curves on those letters to use the stars.

The actual project, for which I shopped the stash, is a pillowcase. I used quilting cottons. The red in the picture above is a Kona cotton solid. The heart is one of the many, many fabrics in the printed cottons stash.