Last month, I discovered a new sewing technique when I took a class on www.craftsy.com from Carol Ann Waugh called Stupendous Stitching. I was very intrigued by it when I saw a tuffet that was made by someone who had used the stitching technique instead of sewing strips together. I wrote about it in my last post and posted a picture of the beautiful tuffet. I noticed that, at the time, the class was on sale for $19.99 and had been around $24.99, I think, or maybe a little more. I'm so glad I took this class. I have had so much fun with it. In a nutshell, it's basically starting your piece with some couching, which is sewing with a zig zag stitch some cording or other decorative trim to the main background fabric. You sew it in a curve and the curve is the basis for the rest of the stitching. After you couch several (usually 4 or 5) trims to the background, you then can start really having fun. Following along the side of the couching line, you just sew curved lines using the decorative stitches on your sewing machine. My sewing machine has 100 stitches, but to be honest, there are only about half of them that I really like and are useful. You use different colored threads and when you are finished, you have a thing of beauty. Here are a few photos of pieces that I have made.
When you have finished your piece, you can use it for many things, such as pillows or apply to purses. My preferred method is to paint a wood artist's panel black and mount the piece onto the panel. Then you have a piece of artwork ready to hang on the wall. Here is another idea. You can make a small piece and glue it to the top of a fabric covered box for a shabby chic look. This picture is of a crazy quilt block, but one of the Stupendous Stitching pieces could be easily adapted and applied to a similar box.
