Yesterday, I made a batch of machine wrapped cords to use on the journal covers I have been making. Once I got started, it was very hard to stop, but I have plenty to use now.
Here is how I set up my machine. Although it is possible to do it free motion and I have done it previously, I found that using the feed dogs up actually helps you in this case. I have my stitch set on a wide zig zag and the length not too short, ie 1.5 to 2, so the stitches don't build up and jam.
I used metallic thread in the top and bottom and did not put the top spool of thread on the top. I put it on the bench to the right of the machine. This is a tip I learned from
Beryl Taylor's videos. She says she got it from a thread manufacturer, who explained that giving the spool more distance to lose it's kinks will help it feed better. Since I started doing this, I have had few problems with metallic thread.
As you can see above, I am using a rolled hem foot.
In these pictures are my cordmaker (which is like a bias tape maker but round) and the rolled hem foot. The left picture shows the top and the right, the bottom of these two.
I find, with narrow wrapped cords, the rolled hem foot works really well. I feed the thread or yarn into the part where the fabric gets rolled and it feeds through the machine.
Some of my cords are wrapped with tulle or nylon knitting tape before going through the machine and in this type of cord, I use the cord maker, which wraps the narrow strip of tulle or nylon around the core yarn before it feeds into the machine.
Now let's get on to the eye candy!
This first cord is just nylon knitting tape. You can decide how much to wrap the cord. As you will see, I like to wrap lightly, so the core colour can be seen.
This is one of the cords where I wrapped the yarn first with the cordmaker. The ladder yarn at the bottom was wrapped in a pale pink nylon, then machine wrapped. The ladders in the yarn made lovely striped in the cord. Obviously I like this one as I made a fair bit.
This was a very simple cord, again, made just from a bulky brown yarn, but Iliked the contrast of the gold with the brown.
This cord is a wrapped one again. This time the wrapper was black tulle. The core was a black, white and grey variegated eyelash yarn. As you can see, this makes a quite thick cord, which is about as thick as the rolled hem foot can go. Also, sometimes the eyelashes poke out a bit in places.
This one was just a simple nylon tape again.
This one was made from a tufted eyelash yarn wrapped in nylon tape and made a very effective colourful cord.
These three cords were made from simple yarns.
This one was made from black and purple yarns twisted together.
These were made from two different narrow ribbons.
This one used two different values of brown yarn and made a lovely cord.
This one used three colours of stranded cotton.
And this one used several strands of pearl 10 cotton.
I hope you enjoyed looking at the cords as much as I enjoyed making them. Now I just have to sew them down all over the place! You will see some of these in upcoming blogs of some of my current projects.
Happy sewing.
So, I made quite alot of cord, but as I was writing this post, I remembered that I had intended to do some with strips of fabric, too - ah well another post then.
