Embellishment Favorites: Couching with Monfilament Thread

As I create with sweatshirts, sweaters, up-cycling and other sewing – even teaching my young students here at Londa’s Sunroom Sewing Studio, I find there are certain embellishment techniques and tools that I use over and over.  My next few blog posts will share my favorites.

COUCHING YARN OR TRIM 

Couched yarn can cover construction edges.

Add here picture of inside of the collar

To make an embellishment yarn look like it is ‘floating’, just couch (stitch) it down with  monofilament thread in the needle.   Regarding color (Clear or Smoke), it depends on what I’m doing.  I generally prefer to have the stitching  look ‘invisible’.  When laying down a lighter colored trim, I select Clear, and for a darker colored trim, I select Smoke.

IMPORTANT TENSION ADJUSTMENT NECESSARY 

I’m quite certain that you will find it necessary to reduce the upper tension (dial down to a lower number) so that the bobbin thread doesn’t show up in little ‘hints’ on the top of the work.  See the picture below…

Lower upper tension until the bobbin thread is NOT peaking at each zigzag point.