Running With Scissors

Church Tag Book

12:40 AM

Tag quilts are really popular for babies, and so I made one for our little guy. It is basically three ovals, sewn in a tripod shape. This makes 3 "pages".

I made the embellishments on each individual oval, then sewed them together, leaving 3 " gap in one page in order to flip the whole book right side out. I also cut a half oval of warm & natural batting in between each page to make it a little thicker. I sewed the batting to the right half of each oval as I added the embellishments.

Some of the details:

ROBOT

The red sections are sewn down, and the box body, but the limbs are off the page. Bead eyes.

BUTTONS: not too cute

JEWELS

BULLDOG

My parents call RJ "the bulldog" so I had to add one. I didn't sew down the ears or tail so they stand up off the book. Bead eyes. Nose and teeth were just embroidery thread.

CATERPILLAR

Button and bead eyes

NAME

TAGS

This was the first time I did applique. I'm sure there are many ways to do these (bulldog, caterpillar, name) but this is how I did it and it wasn't too bad.

APPLIQUE: I drew my design on a flattened coffee filter in pencil. I put it on top of the fabric and sewed around the edges. **Remember these are the opposite so any lettering will need to be sewn backwards at this point*** After it's sewn on, I trimmed the excess fabric and coffee filter so I had the little shape. Then to attach to the page, sew along the edge in a zigzag stitch. You could also zigzag the shape the first time and then just straight stitch the applique to the page.

To do multiple layers like the bulldog, I did the background dark blue fabric first, the put the next color on top of the dark blue. I trimmed the light blue individual shapes, then the whole dog.

Most of the beads were in a big random pack from Walmart that was $2.00

I top-stitched the borders of all the pages to help hold the ribbons flat, and also sewed down the center to make the three separate pages.

I don't know if my explanation makes sense, and I'm definitely a novice with these, but if you wanted to make one, they are pretty cheap and easy...just make sure you sew the beads, buttons, etc. on well or they could become a choking hazard.

Books

Homemade Gift-O-Rama

7:41 PM

For my mom.

My mom has made many wedding dresses over the years and never documented them. So I had the idea to scrounge up as many as I could so she could have a collection of all her work. It took a couple months to locate the brides and get the photos from them, but I'm glad she'll have all but one dress together in a book.

I made a similar book for my husband's parents for last Christmas that has more in depth steps if you are interested. I made this one similarly, but I didn't antique it with shoe polish and ripping pages.

The outside is covered with a scrap of satin left from my own wedding dress and the trim around the title is from my friend's wedding dress made in 2006.

I hacked out the pages of the text book between my pages and used the extracted paper to make each individual page...does that make sense? (I glued 3 or 4 pages together, then cut like 8 pages out of the binding with an exacto knife to give room in the binding for my additional pages. The paper cut out of the binding I spray painted to make the pages.)

I decided to only attach the photos and background stuff to the page by sewing. So all the photos sketches, tissue patterns, lace, trim, was sewn to the paper and I even left some of the threads long hanging off the page.

I made each page and then glued it to the book. I didn't take pictures of the inside covers, but I made collages of sketches, patterns, photos and swatches and covered them with white net. So you can see stuff beneath the net, but not clearly. I guess in my mind it reminded me of a veil or something. Also, her three daughters wrote notes about her and what her sewing talents have meant/ contributed to our lives.

I think that is it that I can think of that went into this book. Except for one of the best things was the sketch. I was browsing through my Mom's old patterns of wedding dresses and found on one, a sketch she'd made. So I copied it to put in the book as a background piece and realized as I was going along that it was the sketch of her little sister's wedding gown. I was excited to have a copy of her actual sketch with the actual dress from the 1980s, and it just so happened the bridal photo is posed just as she sketched the dress. What a gem!!! It's the red page.