Machine Made Cord Tutorial and Indigo Moon Projects

As promised on my Instagram feed last week I wrote a simple tutorial on how to make cord by sewing machine. Here is how it goes:

You will need: 

• A sewing machine with zig-zag feature.
• At least 4 different types of scrap yarns. For example, wool, knitting cotton, thin ribbon or thinly cut fabric. 
• Sewing threads (the colour of your choice!)

The choice of yarns is huge. Chance is that you already have them in your stash! I always need red cords to use in my craft projects so I've chosen mainly red yarns and thread for this project. This is easy, fun and fast to do. 

Five meters of cord ready to go!

Gathered yarns of your choice. The more variety the better. I already have them in my stash so I just randomly chose 4 different types of yarn. 

I threaded my sewing machine using red sewing thread for both top and bottom threads. I set my machine to normal zig-zag stitch. Set the width at 7.0 and length at 2.5. I have a Janome sewing machine, but I'm sure any sewing machine with zig-zag stitches will be fine.

Begin by knotting the ends of the yarns together as in the above photo. You can drop the rest of the yarns on the floor or if you have a basket you can drop them in the basket by your feet.

Place the group of yarns under the sewing machine foot below the knot. Twist the yarns together as in the above photo. Start stitching over the yarns. Twist the yarns as you stitch.  

You can make quite a lot in one go. It's very handy to have cord ready whenever you need it! At Christmas I made more than a dozen sewing rolls for gifts, and this cord was perfect to wrap around them.

I was reading Peggy's blog womanwithwings on her moon stitch ritual project. I love moon stitching and moon dyeing. So I started one too. I sorted through the stash of both hand dyed and vintage indigo fabric for the moons. For the background I'm using mixed Yukata fabric. I thought I would use pieced background for these. They look very nice together! Yes, I'm happy with that!

The idea of this moon stitching is to stitch one block per day for 365 days - the whole year. I don't think I can keep to the rule! So I'm going to make as many as my interest holds up and stop when I'm bored with them, I know I will be!

The first few blocks I started

Some moons are in 2 colours because I treasure every
little bit of vintage indigo fabric.

After Each circle is stitched down, I carefully cut out the background fabric from behind the applique. Now I have these perfect and beautiful inner circles to play with! 

You know how it is, one thing leads to another. I now have another project going side by side with the indigo moon project, but I will call this new project Full Moon!

Sorting through the stash I realised that I have an amazing stash of  indigo fabric. Some of them I dyed myself and some I bought on my visits to Japan, and of course some from Zigu Zagu. If you want to join-in just visit Quilty Folk for the original post.

Only a month into 2016 and I'm already working on 2 awesome projects! I am also working on some UFOs. I will show them to you when I get closer to finishing. 

Until next time

Nat