It’s almost here! The heart-iest day of the year: Valentine’s Day! Of course this calls for a heart-y project and that’s what I want to share with you in this blogpost.
I decided to make a heartfelt wall hanging/table topper with appliqués and embellish it with yarn using the Janome Free Motion Couching Foot Set on the Janome Continental M7.
I started with a centre background piece of white fabric and added a border with cornerstones. Pretty simple, right?
After creating my quilt sandwich, using the pillowcase method to avoid binding, I was ready to add the heart appliqués. I used the same fabrics for the hearts as I had for the border and cornerstones and backed them with fusible web. I cut 4 large hearts, 1 medium heart and 4 small hearts, and arranged the hearts on the white fabric, then fused them down.
I finished the edges of the medium heart and 4 small hearts with a narrow zigzag stitch. The Janome Continental M7 makes such a nice zigzag stitch and I love the F2 Open Toe Satin Stitch foot for great visibility.
Now it was time for some fun!
I attached the Janome Free Motion Couching Foot with the small foot attached (there are two in the set to choose from depending on your yarn thickness) to the Janome Continental M7. I threaded (yarned?) with some chunky yarn (size 5) that was a perfect match to the colours in my large hearts and was ready to stitch the yarn down. I used a 60 weight polyester thread in a matching colour in the top and a similar weight thread in the bobbin.
I wanted to go around the outside edges of the 4 large hearts to finish the edges and to also add some fuzzy texture to them. I love that the Janome Continental M7 has a special Free Motion Couching feature so I don’t even have to think about the settings – it does it all for me! This feature is under the t-shirt icon (Sewing Application menu), under the Optional Specialty Presser Foot tab. I chose Zigzag stitch 1.
I did adjust the settings a bit by reducing the stitch width to 1.3. Now I was all ready to start couching/quilting/stitching!
I reduced the speed control slider on the Janome Continental M7 to less than halfway and slowly stitched along the edge of the appliqués. When using the Janome Free Motion Couching foot, you need to make sure that you pull out an excess amount of yarn to keep it from pulling. You may have to occasionally stop and pull out more yarn as you go – I like to keep it in a yarn puddle behind my presser foot.
The one thing to keep in mind when you are doing this embellishing is that you are actually free motion quilting, but with a zigzag stitch. Kind of boggles the mind, doesn’t it?! Because you are free motion quilting, you control the speed and where the stitches fall, so taking it slow and steady works the best.
When I finished embellishing all 4 large hearts, this is what my wall hanging/table topper looked like.
To complete the project, I needed to add some additional quilting. Using the Janome Professional Grade AcuFeed Flex HP2 foot and HP (High Performance) needle plate, I stitched in the ditch between the white fabric and the borders (I used white thread). I then changed the settings on the Janome Continental M7 to free motion quilting, changed to the QO Open Toe Free Motion Quilting foot, and finished it up with some free motion quilting with loops and swirls to do this.
Here’s the result:
If you’d like to make your own Triple Heart wall hanging/table topper, I’ve created more detailed project instructions that you can find here.
I hope you’ll try the Janome Free Motion Couching Foot Set with your Janome Continental M7 to add some fun texture and fuzziness to your quilting – or other – projects!
Happy creating from Kim Jamieson-Hirst of Chatterbox Quilts, a Janome Canada Artisan in Calgary, Alberta.
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