Saturday Sewing – Organize your Janome CoverPro Accessories

Regardless which Janome CoverPro machines you have; Janome CoverPro 900CPX, Janome CoverPro 1000CPX, Janome CoverPro 2000CPX or the fabulous NEW Janome CoverPro 3000 Professional, you need to keep your tools and accessories to use with the machine organized and easy to find.

Our Janome Canada educator, Celine, created this cute organizer to prop-up on the table or to hang on the wall, as it’s both practical and decorative. It’s a great project to help you learn and get comfortable with adjusting your machine for the different functions and types of stitches. Bonus is that you likely already have all, or most of the materials at home! The Hand-Embroidery Hoop is easy to find at most discount and craft stores, or perhaps you’ve had one kicking around for years, just waiting for the perfect opportunity to use it. Well, dig it out! It’s time to have some fun!

Janome CoverPro 3000 Professional

Celine found inspiration for this project on Pinterest. There’s no pattern to worry about as the size and shape of your hand-embroidery hoop is what you’ll use as a guide to cut out your fabric. It’s always a good idea to use a larger piece of fabric then trim it down, if needed, from the back once it’s hooped.

Organize your tools and accessories in style with the Janome 100th Anniversary Fabric!

Use whatever fabric you’d like. Wovens, or knits, it’s up to you. Celine used regular quilting cotton.

• Cut the fabric 2” larger than the hoop. You’ll need 1 fabric for the background and 1 fabric for the pocket.
• On the background fabric (Celine used white) Sew a row of each type of stitch your machine can create; for example, the Janome CoverPro 3000 Professional has a Chain Stitch; 2 Needle Narrow Cover Hem; 2 Needle Narrow Top Cover; 2 Needle Wide Cover Hem; 2 Needle Wide Top Cover; 3 Needle Cover Hem; and 3 Needle Top Cover.

• Cut the pocket fabric (Celine used the Janome 100th Anniversary fabric) the same size as the background fabric and fold in half.
• Place the pocket fabric on top of the background fabric so the fold is across the width of the embroidery hoop and the cut edges meet across the bottom of the hoop. Pin in place with the pins facing the wrong side of the background fabric.

• Divide as you wish to create the pockets. Keep your scissors/ snips handy, as well as a seam ripper (an unfortunate sewing necessity, lol!) screwdriver to change the needles. Extra needles are always great to have on hand, so store them in this organizer so you have them at the ready when you need them.
• Mark your fabric on the wrong side of the background fabric. You’ll be sewing with your pocket fabric down against the bed of the machine with the background fabric on top – you’ll understand why in the next step.

• Sew on each line with the Chain Stitch; using 1 needle and the Looper; available on every Janome CoverPro machine. with the wrong side of the background fabric facing up. Use a thick thread (30-12wt) thread in the looper and adjust the stitch length accordingly – the thicker the thread, the longer the stitch. The looper stitch will be more pronounced with the thicker thread, which will be on the right side of the pocket fabric. Begin and end with long thread tails.
• Pull the threads to the wrong side of the background fabric and tie to secure.

• If you’d like, cut another piece of background fabric or use a piece of iron-on interfacing to neaten up the wrong side of the background fabric. This basically acts as a lining. The fusible, especially will also help secure the threads in place.
• Since Celine’s sewing is all about adding the little finishing touches, she bound the raw edge of the fabric on the sewing machine before placing it in the hoop. Be sure to catch all thickness going around the pocket and if you decided to line the wrong side of the background fabric. This not only neatened the raw edge of the fabric, it also created a casing through which Celine strung a cord so she could tighten the fabric around the inner hoop. If you choose not to bind the edge, you could also couch over the cord using a wide zigzag stitch and the Janome Beading Foot. Did you know there’s also a Beading Foot for the sergers? Check with your Janome Dealer for details!

Janome Tape Guide Foot – Celine kept the left edge out of the bias strip out of the guide on purpose so you could see the guide which holds your strip in place.

Janome has many options available to attach binding. For the sewing machine, the Janome Binder Foot is a snap on foot for many models, as is the Janome Taping Guide Foot (TG), which is the foot Celine used, as pictured above. The Janome Quilt Binder Set is another popular option you might use. Check with your Janome Dealer to be sure you get the correct presser feet and attachments for your machine. There’s also two sizes of Tape Binders (42mm-12mm and 32mm-8mm) for all CoverPro machines! It’s wonderful to have a variety of presser feet and accessories at your fingertips so you can experiment to see which is best to use for your project at hand. Keep them all neatly in place in your new organizer!

The Janome Taping Guide Foot is on Page 14 of the Bilingual Janome Accessories Guide.

Celine attached her binding on the Janome Continental M7, but any sewing machine will do. Use whatever stitch you wish, but there’s often so many stitches you might not use very much, like the Stretch Stitch (which looks like Lightning Bolt) for example, so why not use it here to get familiar with it?

The Stretch Stitch is different from the regular zigzag stitch as it sews at an angle and acts and looks like a straight line of stitching when sewing knit fabrics together. It gives the seam the stretch it needs to avoid popping the threads. In many Janome machines, you can alter the default stitch width and length. Consult your Instruction Manual for details.

The stitching is beautifully consistent, as is the width of the bias binding strip using the Janome Tape Guide Foot. Be sure to leave the the ends free if you wish to string the cording through.

Since Celine loves to embroider; she often says she “wears her machine” as she’s added embroidery to so many garments, she added the name of the machine on the organizer, as well as the kind of fabric used. It’s great to have a project which incorporates many machines as so many of us have more than one Janome machine so they all get some use. For those who don’t have embroidery capabilities, perhaps you could stitch the name of the machine with the fonts built-in to your sewing machine, or write out a label by hand, or use a heat-transfer label in your printer with your computer. There’s sew many options, do what’s best for you!

In typical Celine fashion, the back is just as beautiful and neatly finished as the front!

As mentioned, this organizer can be created for any machine, but Celine specifically focused on the Janome CoverPro machines; Janome CoverPro 900CPX; Janome CoverPro 1000CPX; Janome CoverPro 2000CPX and Janome CoverPro 3000Professional. Contact your Janome Dealer to arrange a test drive!

Happy Sewing!