Shelley's latest pattern on Craftsy!

What a great pincushion and thread catcher! Easy to follow pattern, with great sewing machine instruction.

Here is the link;http://www.craftsy.com/pattern/sewing/other/snowflake-pin-cushion--thread-catcher/217541

Tonbo Bag

Yay!! I finally convinced Shelley to list her beautiful Tonbo Satchel pattern on Craftsy! http://www.craftsy.com/pattern/sewing/accessory/tonbo-a-japanese-style-satchel/203175?rceId=1461546275279~s7adsdxo  She has so many great projects and I hope she posts them all. She pays great attention to detail and gives excellent sewing machine instruction in each one.

We used this bag for our TopStitchers Club and  the techniques covered were, Sashiko, applique, perfect edge stitching, ruffling, corded pin tucks and zipper insertion without a zipper foot.

She includes fantastic close-ups of the fabric and foot placement.

I can hardly wait til she puts up her next one!!

Presser Foot Tips #1

It's a miserable wet day here and I am not very motivated to work on machines. Since I am reasonably caught up and you probably wouldn't want me to work on your machine when I'm not really into it, I thought I'd put some light on something that I see all the time. About 10 to 15% of the machines that I see for service, come in with the applique or embroidery foot on them. When I mention it to the client, they most often say, they want it on for the visibility it gives. I can understand that thought, but, the foot gives poor stitch results unless used for the purpose for which it was designed. Here is a pic of that style of foot.

You can see the hollowed out underside that was designed to allow a bead of satin stitching flow unimpeded. When you use these feet for normal sewing, this happens:

I hope this is seeable. As the needle pulls up, out of the fabric, it pulls the fabric up with it. That's because there is little or no downward support for the fabric. How that shows up as a problem can be seen here:

On the straight stitch, the knot isn't always in the center of the fabric and on the zig-zag, you can see the pucker. This is because the fabric is not properly supported under the foot.
In this picture:

You can see, when using the regular foot, whatever # or letter that happens to be for your machine, the straight stitch is perfect and the zig-zag did not pucker. Same thread, fabric and tension setting.
For full disclosure: Sewn on Shelley's B770 with Aurifil 50wt cotton, Sevenberries Cotton fabric, Organ HLx5 size 80/12 needle and all settings at default.