... and Thread Sketching a Notebook Cover

I have been obsessed with the idea of sketching with my sewing machine for AGES. Problem is my teensy machine is pretty basic and everything I had read about called for free motion stitching with a special foot, and the ability to drop the feed dogs. None of which I can do!!

See! Basic!

I thought I would have to wait until I had saved enough pennies to buy a new machine, but I decided to give it a go anyway... And it worked!!! Inspired by this post by Mark Montano I went for a dragonfly design and decided to make a notebook cover for my sister-in-law's birthday.
This is in NO WAY a tutorial; more a ramble about what I did... Please feel free to comment or advise any suggestions!!!

I sketched out a picture of a dragonfly, and then traced this with a water soluble fabric pen onto a piece of fabric (cut from curtains that were hanging in the house when we moved in!!). Then started stitching!

I did the outline first and tried to keep to the lines as much as possible(!). When you lower the feed dogs on your sewing machine, you can stitch in any direction. Without this feature, I found it best to do it in short bursts and stopped to pivot the fabric round when necessary. The wings were tricky but I managed as best I could. To fill the body out I did lots of overlapping zigzag stitches. And then lots more!

To finish it off I “cheated” by hand stitching around the eyes to redefine them. I hadn't seen it at the time but I have since found this post by clutterpunk for a really good tutorial using the same techniques.

I then trimmed it to size to fit a notebook. Through my excitement, I cut it too short(!) so had to reattach strips of the cut off fabric. That will teach me for patting myself on the back too soon for a job well done!! I attached some strips for the lining, turned it inside out and then hand stitched the flaps to hold the book cover.

And I'm really pleased with how it turned out. Now I know I can do this with my machine, there will be no stopping me!