Morning everyone!
Hope you all had a lovely Valentines Day yesterday! This week we have a fantastic tutorial for you - Stitching on Cards with a Sewing Machine! I have always wanted to know how to do this, so I was really chuffed when Anne suggested this tutorial.
Our challenge this week is:
ALL STITCHED UP
Put some stitches on your card, whether they are real or faux!
Hello and welcome to this week's tutorial, which is all about using your sewing machine to help you to create your cards. Lots of people love to hand sew and that is fine to use for the challenge, but I love my sewing machine and "hand" is a four letter word to me lol! Stitching adds texture, contrast and interest to lots of cards and papercraft projects and is such fun to do. Rather than a full tutorial, I am going to give you some tips that I hope you will find useful.
First of all, please don't be scared to use your sewing machine on paper and cardstock, you will not damage it at all. Don't make the mistake of buying one of the cheap light machines to use if you already have a machine; you could waste so much time and cardstock getting it to stitch well. I use my top of the range machine, mainly because the lighting on it is so good. You will however blunt your sewing machine needle very quickly when sewing through paper and you need to keep a separate one for this. So you know which is the blunt needle, either colour is with Copic/Promarker pens or use one of the speciality needles that have a marking on them. The LH needles has been coloured with Copic, the RH one is a Schmetz embroidery needle that has a red band on it.
To get your straight stitch looking neat at the corners of your card, mark a little dot where it needs to finish. As you get close to the mark, slow your stitching right down and, if you need to, stop, raise the foot of the machine and move it to the right place by hand.
This gives neat corners to your stitching.
The hardest part of a line to keep looking good is the start and the finish, if you can hide it where something on the card will cover it, this makes it easy.
This looks really messy, but the main image will cover all the lines where I've moved from one shape to another, without having to start and stop the stitching. Put them together and you get this:
If you can't hide the start and finish, make sure you leave a good length of thread at the top and the bottom so you can thread a hand needle and take the thread to the back of your card and trim it. I tape the ends down with double sided tape so they don't come loose.
It's easy to use the foot of your machine to keep the sewing line straight, but if you find it difficult, why not intentionally curve the line? Just mark your corners so your line ends up framing the image. It makes a nice border if you go round once:
I like it even more if I stitch round it twice:).
One last tip for you to try: why not let your sewing machine do the work and set a long stitch, with no thread in the top or the bobbin, to make paper piercing quick and easy? Sttich around it, if you want larger holes just go over them with your prongy tool, no need to measure the distance, your machine has already done the work for you.
We have two fabulous sponsors this week. The random.org winner this week will win:
3 images of your choice from Limited Runs
Nikki from Limited Runs says: I've started doing more paper crafts within the last Year and have found it to be very addictive and slowly it's been getting larger. Creating Digi's just happened to be a blend of using my drawing and computer graphix together to create "Limited Runs" which is my little digital stamp store. I've also started Freebie Fridays and will be doing this for a Limited time too. Each may be posted from 1 day to ??? (Limited Time Offer) May you all enjoy my digi's as much as I love to make them. SO if your looking for some YUMMY cupcakes I've got over 50 Varieties to choose from and lots more with more always in the works.
This weeks Featured Tipper is going to win an amazing prize from our new sponsor
who is offering our featured tipper an amazing book:
A bit about Stash Books: Stash Books is an imprint of C&T Publishing located in the San Francisco Bay Area. If you’re craving beautiful authenticity in a time of mass-production…Stash Books is for you. Stash Books is a new line of how-to books celebrating fabric arts for a handmade lifestyle. Backed by C&T Publishing’s solid reputation for quality, Stash Books will inspire you with contemporary designs, clear and simple instructions, and engaging photography.
Here is some inspiration from the DT...using some lovely images from Limited Runs!
Ei
Remember, all you have to do to win a prize is:
- Create something using the theme of the challenge
OR - leave a tip (using the comment section)
OR - do both!!
You can now only enter the challenge 3 times - just as long as its a new creation - any back dating creations (before today's date) will be removed.
You must also do a link to Top Tip Tuesday on your creation post.
Only someone leaving a tip can win the featured tipper prize - you can leave your tip via the comment section of the post.
Remember, there is also the chance to be one of our Top 3 creations as well!!
You have until 11pm (UK Time) on Monday 21st February to enter - so go on, get creating!
