Free Motion Fun

 

 

Earlier this week I had the great pleasure of teaching a free motion embroidery class at Fabric HQ, in their amazing classroom at their equally amazing shop. 

 

This was only my second time teaching free motion embroidery - the first time was a one to one workshop I gave at my house.  Fabric HQ was a much better location, they have more room and more fabric - not to mention cake!  It's a beautifully inspiring location for both teacher and student. 

 

Source

I had 6 students for the evening, which kicked off with a very brief overview of free motion embroidery followed by a chance to doodle on a piece of fabric to get used to the technique.  It's a bit of a strange sensation at first, because you need to lower the feed dogs to move the fabric in any direction you want.  Instead of the machine taking the fabric through by itself, you have total control.  I was very pleasantly surprised how quickly everyone got the hang of it, and started producing lovely swirly designs on their scrap fabrics.

 

 

 

 

 

Next we went on to choose a design for the "real thing".  I took several templates with me, ranging from a sewing machine, to a cup and saucer and a very lovely high heeled shoe.  The sewing machine was pretty popular - as you'd expect - and one student chose to draw her own design instead of using one that I'd brought along.  She ended up with a totally unique and amazing chicken.

 

Choosing fabrics was the next fun step, accompanied by tea and cake.  We spent quite a bit of time rummaging through the large box of scraps provided by Fabric HQ, matching colours and choosing prints that coordinated well. 

 

 

 

By the end of the evening everyone had a completed picture to take home with them.  Some decided to mount them up there and then, others took them away unmounted as they already had plans for them. 

 

 

 

 

 

Sadly I wasn't able to get a photo of all 6, but here are some of the finished projects.  I love how the two sewing machines look so different sewn in different fabrics. 

 

I'm teaching another 2 free motion embroidery classes at Fabric HQ early next year, on Tuesday 14th January and Saturday 14th February .  If you're local and are interested, check out the details here. 

 

Thanks so much to the lovely Rae at Fabric HQ for asking me to teach these classes.  I had such fun, I only hope my students enjoyed it as much as I did!