You quilted it. You designed it, you’ve stippled and embroidered. And still it’s not quite there. It doesn’t quite move.

Terribly frustrating. Easily fixed. Sometimes all it takes is a scrap of yarn.

Yarn doesn’t work in a sewing machine. If it’s lumpy or thick, it won’t go through the needle or the bobbin. But it can be couched down. What is couching? You stitch over the yarn to attach it to the quilt. Almost anything can be couched as long as it’s not so thick a needle won’t go through it.

Here are some quilts that aren’t quite moving. And here are some yarns I considered using on them.

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Any of these yarns would work. But what do I want them to do? On the pink butterfly piece, I want to accentuate the green plant like forms. A dark stem will do that. For the grey moth, I want a swirl of color to draw the eye through the surface of the quilt. I t needs the brighter bolder choice. On the butterfly in leaves, I want to punch up the stems to define the leaves better. All those greens will work.

I use a regular pressor foot with a groove in the center. The yarn slides right through it.

A walking zigzag works very well to stitch down yarn. Although a zigzag works as well. I use monofilament nylon in the top and regular poly embroidery thread in the top. I take a few stitches with the feed dogs down and then raise the feed dogs and stitch the yarn. Then I drop the feed dogs again to anchor the yarn.

Once the thread is anchored, I can just trim off any edges.

A scrap of yarn can make your whole piece dance!