The holiday season brings out the creativity and desire to make handmade gifts and decor items. In yesterday’s post, we used built-in decorative stitches on the PFAFF performance icon to cover the edges of four of the fused stockings for the holiday stocking banner. Today, we’re creating our own designs on two solid cream stockings using the Sequence Creator program.
The Sequence Creator program is built into the PFAFF performance icon and lets you create a sequence of stitches, including any from the 6 built-in fonts.
I intentionally picked plain cream fabric for two of my stockings because I wanted to take advantage of the many built-in stitches on the performance icon to create my own stocking designs. You can see the large selection of stitches by checking out this stitch chart. All of the stitches can be viewed in the stitch menu on the Multi-Touch Screen.
Once you finish creating a sequence, which may include the stop and tie-off commands, you load it into the sewing mode. The sequence will display at full size on the Multi-Touch Screen with the commands included.
For the sequences I created to put on the stockings, two different presser feet are recommended. Both foot 2A and 8 work without attaching to the IDT System which makes sense, because to stitch these stitches the needle has to move in different directions.
To stitch out the sequence inside of the area of the cream solid stockings, I added the fusible webbing to the back of the cream fabric, but didn’t cut out the stocking. Instead, I added a layer of INSPIRA Fast & Easy Tear-A-Way Light under the fusible, and lined up the stocking outline inside the stitching area. I placed the fabric with the stocking sideways under the needle, so the words would stitch out across the stocking. I kept the machine’s overall speed low and used the Start/Stop button to let the machine stitch automatically – I just guided the fabric under the needle.
On the first cream solid stocking, I stitched out the word JOY across the top. Then I wanted to recreate the idea of stitching at the ankle and remembered how much fun the Radiant Stitches are on this machine! I loved making the baby quilt full of radiant stitches and decided to add one that reminded me of trees to the heel of this stocking.
It had been a while, so I was glad to have the how-to instructions right on the screen to follow. To keep going in the instructions, I just touched the screen and scrolled.
The Radiant Stitch follows a curve then automatically stops so you can turn the fabric for the stitches to continue behind the presser foot. In the photo below, you might be able to see the outline of my fusible on the reverse side of the fabric.
To mark the curved line, I used the UNIQUE SEWING fast fade marker pen.
With the first cream solid fabric stocking ready, I turned to the Maxi art stitches to help me create the second one. This large floral stitch is one of my favorites and really sings of the holidays to me. I first selected the Sequence Creator so that I had control of stitching the motif just once. I picked stitch 5 on the menu below, but you can see there are several large stitches that have just as much impact on a project.
I thought it was really fun that when the stitch loaded it appeared in lime green on my burgundy screen – how festive!
The final step today is to cut out these two stockings.
The Sequence Creator program on the PFAFF performance icon really allowed me to personalize this stocking banner. Come back tomorrow to see what my stockings look like!
This is part 3 of 5 in this series
Go back to part 2: Make your holiday jolly with this machine applique stocking banner
Go to part 4: Choosing a machine quilting stitch to complement background fabric