The sewing machine
Almost two years ago now, I bought a sewing machine for myself with Christmas money (thanks mom and dad!). I was sure I was going to sew up a set of pillows for the couch and some new window sheers for the back door. However, the sewing machine never made it out of the box - it just sat there in its space in the studio - until about ten days ago.
See - tape is still on the top!
I had the same aversion to taking the sewing machine out of the box that I did to using my stitching templates that I blogged about here. However - after my success with the stitching templates, I decided to get the sewing machine out of the box to make some cute stitched note cards I had seen on the Internet (and my apology to whoever made them - I can't for the life of me remember where I saw the idea).
Mine ended up being about 4 x 6" when they were done and I snipped off the ends a bit too close to the edge of the paper so I had to make sure I used plenty of matte medium on the edges where you can see some loose threads. You can do any size you want though and wouldn't necessarily have to do the lines quite as neatly as I tried to do mine.
To make them you're going to need:
sewing machine
blue thread
pinkish/red thread
piece of heavy paper or cardstock (I used watercolor paper) in the size you want.
The process is pretty simple.
I measured down about 7/8" from the top of the paper to get the characteristic thicker area at the top of the piece of paper. That's where I stitched my first row.
I found that half the width of the full presser foot on the sewing machine was about the right width to stitch the lines at.
I added my pink line after all the blue lines were added. This was at about 3/4" from the left side of the paper.
I snipped my loose threads.
Since this was just a test piece I added it to my journal with writing for that day on it (I didn't take a photo of that though - sorry). I'm now a bit obsessed with stitching on paper and have a couple of fabric projects in the works too I'll share a bit later.
And, just because I've not posted a photo of her in a while...Fluffy was truly enjoying the few days that Lindsay stayed at Grandma and Grandpa's in between my trips so she had mommy and the house all to herself - isn't she gorgeous! Her personality has changed so much since Dippy passed away - she wants so much more attention now.