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Thursday, October 31, 2013

Playing with decorative stitches for Halloween

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! As I mentioned on my Facebook page, I’m the delighted owner of a new Janome Horizon 8900 sewing machine, and I’ve been happily mucking about with all of its stitches, features, and capabilities.

Straight stitching may be 99% of my (and many people’s) sewing, but I’m determined to put the hundreds of decorative stitches on this machine to use somehow. I never thought I’d have any use for the high-heeled shoe stitch (no. 264 on the 8900), but when I was sewing out a stitch sampler, it struck me that the shoes looked a bit like witchy boots, so that’s what they became when I worked up the little Halloween appliqué picture yesterday. And the fingers holding the pumpkin? They’re actually petals from partially sewn out flower stitches (no. 210). For a machine with no embroidery function, I’m pretty impressed!

Apparently I’ve had witch legs on the brain; one of my projects for the Fall 2013 issue of Stitch was a doorstop inspired by the wicked witch departed by Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

Witch Legs Doorstop

If I’d had the new machine when I made the doorstop, I could have sewn the buckles on by machine with the button-sewing function! I need to sew a button back onto a jacket, so that’s what I’ll be doing tonight between trick-or-treaters ringing the doorbell. So the spookiest thing happening for Halloween round here is that I’m getting excited about a mending job.

2 comments:

Heather said...

Cute, but now you need to explain how you made the face!

Unknown said...

Fair point! The short answer is an assortment of satin stitches--I kept notes on all the stitch settings, so I'll work on getting the details written up.