Nellie"s Needles

Monday, March 09, 2009

Look, Ma - No Hands!

Well, I do use my hands to guide the fabric ... and with this set-up I get to use both hands for that job.
Since posting the tutorial for how I machine couch yarns to fabric, I've devised a set-up for the yarn to feed "hands-free".
A container for the yarn is placed out of the way to the rear of my machine. I use the contraption made to feed thread wound on a cone for domestic machines to feed the yarn from the container.

This set-up works only for couching yarn to the surface of fabric. The yarn still needs to be held and guided by hand to successfully couch it for an edge finish.

The quilt in the photos is the one featuring the leaves I pounded in the Smoky Mountains last fall. You'll see more of what is being doing on it pretty soon.

This method was used to couch the yarn to the frame bordering the "Our Biosphere Reserve" featuring the Smoky Mountains.

4 comments:

Joyce said...

I have one of those stands so maybe I'll give your method a try. I have a couching foot but the thread still has to be steered. This would solve that problem.

Barbara Strobel Lardon said...

Great tip! I am going to try that!

Maggi said...

What a great idea, thanks for sharing.

Helen said...

This is a really cool tip Nellie. A leap of genius in the problem solving department me thinks :D Thank you for sharing the idea with us. I shall try it out.