Machine Galloons

There is a high probability that you’ve encountered gallon sticker shock. It‘s kind of amazing how many yards it takes to go all the way around that set of vestments, and good galloons aren’t cheap.

A rather sad set of reversible vestments came into the sewing room, partially finished. There was quite of bit of that ‘leaky lining’ going on where the green side would peek out on the edge of the white side and the white would peek out on the green side.

Since it was a travel set, we didn't want to bulk it up with two layers of galloon, so we started playing around with the array of decorative stitches on one of our sewing machines. In this case #27 was the winner.

We also ran this border on the other travel sets. What a satisfying project!

Here are a few of tips:

• Be sure to carefully iron the edges before stitching so the leak-over is minimized.

• Be careful not to pull or push the fabric as you sew. Let the feed dogs drive. If you apply any tension you'll mess up the evenness of the stitch repeats.

• Do a test run on some scrap fabric to play with stitch possibilities. Maybe a combination would work!

• Make sure you have enough thread. Machine galloon goes through a lot.