Embellishment: Keeping it Simple with Decorative Stitching

My bird'y vest is flannel, lined with flannel
The decorative machine stitching adds weight that
helps the fabrics lay better, and gives the garment
a more definite edge.

There's always a sewing tradeoff between focusing on one garment, learning techniques and finishing up some of those unfinished objects (UFO's).

Not to mention artistic fever.

This month artistic fever hit big time. I imagined using all kinds of specialized embellishment techniques. Surely I was going to do all kinds of elegant work on the vest I was creating as fodder for my January podcast. How about quilting it? I thought about creating a motif of pieced flying geese blocks and turning them into diagonal pockets. Wouldn't that be darling? Of course the pocket-blocks would be machine quilted as well as the entire front and back. Then I read an article in an ancient Threads magazine about Sashiko. There's another technique I've always meant to spend time learning. I mean..... how long could it take to learn? (Yes that's a joke :-) Or, I could experiment with machine techniques for doing Shasiko. There's plenty of info on the web!

Yeah, let's get real!

Am I actually planning to get some work done this month? Sewing time is hobby time and it needs to be carefully budgeted. Besides that, I've got several projects cut out that I'd really like to finish up. I stopped in the middle of the flannel birds vest above to cutout and finish a rose pink tee I've really been enjoying wearing today. If I'd gone off focusing on major embellishment techniques there would have been no time to get a tee shirt done. And those half-done light weight denim trousers would be haunting my dreams. OK, they still are, but I have high hopes of getting the buttons done on the bird'y vest and getting on with them.

The tradeoff, of course, was to use decorative machine stitching. I love the look and the heft it adds to the edge of my vest, as well as the hem, sleeves and neckline of that rose pink tee. It doesn't even matter if others notice it. Every time I slip one of these garments on, I get pleasure from those stitches.

And it takes little more than extra thread and maybe an extra 30 minutes or so of sewing time.

Every time I slip on the sleeve of my new
rose tee, I enjoy the hefty band of
decorative machine stitching on the edges.
I used a lengthened feather stitch for this shirt.

Decorative machine stitching is an embellishment that gives me hobby time to cut down my stack of UFO's.  It's my budget sure-cure for artistic fever.