I’ve always been obsessed with perfect, but love the look of scribble stitching. Julia with Stitches by Julia does a lot of scribble stitching in her projects. Check out her You Tube channel HERE.
One of my favorite artists is LuAnn Kessi. If you love all kinds of fabric projects, check out her blog. After following both artists for years, I wanted to try this scribble stitching. It looked easy, but really out of my comfort zone. Then LuAnn posted several blog posts on the technique, and it was time for me to try it.
As I said, I’ve been obsessed with the perfect stitch for as long as I can remember. When I bought my Juki I was happy to finally have a machine that produces nice stitches when I free motion. However, black and some dark threads even with this great machine just don’t produce “perfect” stitches. With scribble stitching we aren’t looking for perfect. In fact, you want them to look like you’re sketching, not sewing. Dave said they looks “organic.” I like that!
It reminds me of drawing all of those mandalas. More about that later.
I started with fabric that I had leaf printed. I was debating on hand stitching or scribble stitching, and decided on the latter.
I added SF101 stablizer to the back of the fabric.
Then to iron it, I covered the fabric with a teflon sheet so the iron would not get any sticky on it.
Then I turned it over, laying the piece on top of the sheet and ironing from the back to make sure it was attached good.
Now to head to the machine. I’m using black thread with my free motion foot. I’ve lowered my feed dogs, added gloves on my hands, and got started.
Here is the finished piece.
Here are a couple more.
This reminds me of the mandala drawing. When you make a mistake, you have to push on through because the more you sew (or draw), the more your eye doesn’t see mistakes. With the mandalas, the repetition fools your eye and you end up with a nice design even with mistakes. Of course, this technique is suppose to look somewhat sloppy. It’s really interesting and I had to push myself to get out of the lines.
I’ll be doing more of this for sure.
When I sew, I get kind of stressed which makes me hot. I know it’s weird, but I’ll be comfortable in this room, and all I have to do is start sewing and I’m hot. Anyway, awhile back I bought this cute little fan. It doesn’t come with a plug, so you have to buy a power brick. For me that was perfect since I didn’t have to place it close to the power strip. Anyway, I really like it and it has several speeds. It’s a little loud, but that’s okay too. And it keeps me cool!
Now I need to get back to the machine! Thanks for dropping by.
Organic, yes, I would agree with that word. Your hubby chose wisely, lol.
Hey Lynda…….great idea to scribble stitch on your printed fabrics. The dark thread is perfect on them and really accentuates the leaves. The more you scribble stitch, the easier it is to stitch wonky and go outside the lines. Now I need to rummage through my printed fabrics and find something to scribble upon! Thanks for the inspiration….
LuAnn in Oregon
Yep, organic!! He did love it though.
LuAnn, Those I had just printed the other day. I thought I’d dig up some of my old ones. Lots of ideas. I do want to try your way with the applique. Thanks for the encouragement. It was hard to be messy. I’m wanting to stay on the lines. Thank you for the inspiration to do this.