Decorative and floating stitches unite to make the gift giving season easy

How many people are on your gift list? Too many to make quilts for that’s for sure! But quick little handmade gifts are appreciated too. In yesterday’s post I made a personalized mug rug using the PFAFF Stitch Creator feature. Well, I’m not done! It was hard to play and create stitches and not use more of them in projects. Today’s project is quick and easy and uses even more of the stitches built into the PFAFF quilt expression 720.

To start I went into the stitch menu and selected the personal stitch menu to pick another one of the stitches I created. I picked stitch 6 in the menu below.

I chose a wide piece of neutral fabric and neutral thread to stitch out these snowflakes and layered it with a piece of Inspira Fast and Easy Tear-A-Way Light. For stitches that go in different directions, I let the machine do the work by using the Start/Stop button. Then I guided the fabric gently as it’s fed through the machine. I also lowered the speed on the machine by long pressing on the speed icon and then moving the speed down one; this keeps the stitches even and the machine stable as it works on my table.

I positioned the short edge of the fabric under the needle with the needle lined up in the middle and watched my stitches come to life.

You can see in my stitched row I selected to triple stitch some of the stitches.

I really liked how the stitches turned out so I decided to cut the strip in half and use it to make another small gift; I decided to make a coaster!

This idea gave me the perfect opportunity to use another one of my favorite stitch features on the PFAFF quilt expression 720, the floating stitches.

I left the temporary stabilizer on the back of my fabric strips and put them right sides together. I let the machine do the work again using the Start/Stop button while I made sure to keep the fabric straight. Part of the fun of the floating stitches is once it’s stitched, I can see the whole stitch on the wrong side of the fabric, not just half of it.

I always feel like a bit of a magician when I open the fabrics and gently pull them to bring the stitches across the seam on the right side of the fabric.

Now it was time to go back and fill in the spaces between the stitches with more stitches! I like to go for symmetry when I’m making a design using stitches so I only picked two more stitches to cover this fabric.

The outside rows I did first using ornamental stitch 5.3.21; I did turn my fabric so both rows of stitches are facing the same direction. Then I added stitch 5.2.1 between the floating stitches and my created stitches.

I used the same neutral thread for all of the stitches and love the look. Of course, I can see creating another coaster with each row of stitches in a different color! But this one will make a nice gift too:)

To turn the stitched fabric into a coaster I first removed the outer parts of the stabilizer from the back of the fabric. Then I trimmed the fabric to 5″ square. I layered it with a piece of batting the same size and then cut a backing piece the same size from a leftover holiday print. I put the backing fabric right side down and changed to the ¼″ quilting foot. Then I stitched around the edges leaving a 2″ turning gap along one of the sides without the stitches.

I clipped the excess fabric from the corners then turned the fabric through the gap and pushed the corners out square and flat. With the seams at the turning gap finger pressed closed, I sewed a topstitch of ⅛″ around the coaster.

This pretty neutral coaster will make a great add on gift with some chocolate and a mug, or maybe a specialty hot chocolate mix and a book. Creating this quick quilted gift has got me thinking about the holiday season and feeling optimistic about making a handmade gift for the people on my list. I know there are enough stitches on the PFAFF quilt expression 720 to make each one different!