Fabric Tag Tutorial

Hi! So I said I would post about how I made this lovely tag... so here's a tutorial!

Fabric tag!

What you need:

• Scrap fabric with batting, at least 3''x5'' in length. If you have a bigger piece, don't cut it smaller, we will quilt the 1 piece of fabric & batting and a larger size is less fiddly to do this on
• Piece of fabric in a lighter color that will be the 'message' side.
• Scissors, pencil for marking, pins.
• Button-hole making skills.

I would say that you need some basic sewing skills- quilting, top stitching, and making a button hole. In reality, you're making a tag and it doesn't need to be perfect. I'm a beginner quilter and I managed to make a half-decent one!

Tag Tutorial

1. Quilt your scrap fabric- I had this laying around from the end of my baby quilt. I quilted the 1 piece of fabric and batting together using diagonal lines, but you could try free-motion quilting if you're feeling adventurous.

The piece I used was approx 7''x 6'' but it doesn't matter because you'll trim it down after this step.

Scraps of fabric & batting from my quilt

I quilted the top in diagonal lines...

...or try free-motion quilting and follow along with the fabric pattern!

2. Trim your quilted piece to 3''x 5''. Cut your lighter fabric to have the same dimensions.

Neutral fabric on the left, quilted fabric on the right.

3. Now take a pencil and mark two diagonal lines so we can get the diagonal shape at the top of the tag. My picture shows that I used my 45 degree lines on my cutting mat and I used those to make the tag top symmetric. Do not cut these lines yet.

I drew on two diagonal lines to make the top of the tag.

4. Place the two pieces of fabric right-sides together, pin. We are leaving the bottom open so the tag can be turned inside out after. Starting in the bottom corner, use a 1/8'' seam and sew up and around to the other side, leaving the bottom open. I pretended the diagonal lines I drew at the top were the edges, so I sewed inside of it. It's not a big deal if you sew on top of the lines, we're cutting the excess off anyways.

Leave the bottom of the tag open. Use ~1/8 inch seam and sew to the other bottom corner, leaving the bottom open (so it can be turned inside out after).

5. Now cut the corners off the ends off the tag. Now is a good time to assess if this looks symmetrical. If not, just run a couple of stitches on one of the sides to even it up. 

This is what your tag should look like. See the bottom is open. Sorry I didn't think what color of thread I was using on this step!

6. Turn the tag right-side out. Fold the fabric in on the bottom, pin and steam.

Fold up the bottom edges so the raw ends are inside the tag. I turned it in approx 1/4''.

Front view, before sewing. It's looking like a tag now.

7. Close up the bottom edge with ~1/8'' top stitch, and continue around the entire tag. This was a little tricky to do, but just use a consistent distance around the entire tag, pivotting at the corners & continuing to the end. Backstitch to secure. 

See my tag, this is the bottom corner.

 8. Create a button hole at the top, so a ribbon can feed through. Make sure you line up the centre of the buttonhole to the centre of the tag!

I have an automatic buttonhole feature on my machine. I simply put the foot on, choose my width of buttonhole, and push the pedal. It creates the buttonhole in 1 continuous process and I watch in amazement :)

I played around with some parameters and decided '10' works for me... your machine will be different so I would suggest practicing on a scrap piece of fabric to see how you want your button hole.

My buttonhole foot.

Husqvarna Sapphire 835 buttonhole parameters

I tested two sizes, 16 and 10. I prefer 10. I then marked on my tag where I needed the needle to start to create the buttonhole.

9. You're done! Write a message, I used a regular ball-point pen because I can't imagine anyone would actually wash this tag. Whatever pen you use, TEST IT on a scrap piece of fabric before you write on your tag so you can make sure the ink doesn't bleed!!

Finished result. Tie a ribbon through this and write a message!

Tag from the baby quilt that I made last week... blogged here

Thanks for reading! If you have any questions just leave a comment below and I will do my best to clarify things. 

~knittypie

Quilt for a friend...

Last time I posted about buying some cute girly fabric ...

Sometimes I'll just keep bundles of fabric and debate for weeks (or months) what to do with it. This bundle, however, was purchased with a particular project in mind. One of my best friends told me she was having a girl! I bought this fabric with her and her little one in mind. I also fell in love with this zig zag quilt so I knew I had to give the free pattern a try!

I cut out 4''x4'' triangles in order to maximize my fat quarter fabric amounts. I love the tip about how to create perfect paired triangles, it's much easier than cutting the triangles out & trying to sew on the bias. I laid them all out and sewed the strips together. Here's the finished product, I think it looks great!

Front side, after washing so it's a little wrinkled.

Back side, I love this fabric and how it looks with the dark pink binding...

Can't forget the tags! Brown one is from RememberWynn on Etsy. The white one is one I made with some scraps!

It was my first time sewing binding on by machine. I found a great tutorial here for a machine binding tutorial. If you look closely in the corner on the picture below, you can see where I was a little wobbly. I'm sure practice would make it look a lot better, but what baby would care about a couple of wiggly stitches anyways?

Machine binding... It's not quite straight but it saved me SO MUCH TIME!

Overall, I learned some new techniques on this quilt and I'm very happy it was completed in time!

What's next you ask? Here's a sneak-peek...a mini-tutorial on the cute tags I've been making with the leftovers from the quilt!

Do you love this? I'll share a mini-tutorial once I get some more photos!

Thanks for reading! If you like the tutorials that I link to you should follow me on Pinterest, it's where I find a lot of inspiration!
~knittypie

Sick Day...

Today I was at home with a cold, so I took this opportunity to catch up on some sewing and blogging!

First up, I have some photos of a quilt that I created for my mom at Christmas this past year. I used a pattern called Scandinavian Snowball Fun by Lynette Anderson. I love her designs, and so does my local quilt store. They had kits with this pattern so I credit them with choosing the coordinating fabrics. I love how this turned out, even though my embroidery is a little crooked in places.

This is the second quilt I've ever made!

Putting the lights on the tree...

Riding in a sleigh... (sorry this one is a little blurry!)

On the way to school... my favorite one

Back of the quit

I used fabric scraps from the quilt for the applique for the snowballs, which was hard for me because it was my first time doing applique and I'm sure I wasn't using the most efficient technique. Nevertheless, I love it, and so does my mom :)

My niece turned 3 last week, and so I made her one of these simple skirts. For the full tutorial, see this blog tutorial, I have summarized what I've done below.

Supplies:

• Thick elastic band for waist. This was for a smallish 3 year old with a waist of 17 inches, so I bought an 18 inch elastic.
• Cute fabric. I used a square approximately 13'' long and 28'' wide. This was a little big for my niece, but I just folded the waistband over on her so she can grow into it. If you have a child, try measuring a skirt that they already own and approximate the length from there. Sorry I'm not more help!

Found this cute fabric on clearance at Fabricland, and my niece LOVES Yo Gabba Gabba.

So I cut out a square approx 13'' long and 28'. I folded over and ironed a seam on the bottom of the rectangle, approx 1/2'' wide.

 

Picture trying to show how I folded over the bottom seam

Stitching the seam down, approx 1/8'' from the folded edge

seam after sewing

Then I sewed up the side to create a tube... (no photo of this step). I stitched the elastic waistband, then pinned it in 4 places onto the fabric skirt. As I sewed, I stretched the fabric to make it fit the circumference of the fabric tube. Here's what it looks like when it's done: 

Finished skirt

Zoomed in on elastic waist.

Here she is modeling the finished product. It's a little big, as I mentioned I had to fold the waist over... If I made this again, I would make a longer rectangle, maybe 32'' and cut it so it flares out a little at the bottom, and add some lace to make it extremely girly.

And finally, here's some fabric I recently picked up... I can't wait to get started on this!!

Thanks for reading! ~knittypie

Quick 'Design Wall' project

Hi!

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was going to make a design wall similar to this one. I have an IKEA canvas print that measures about 118 cm x 80 cm (~46'' x 31''). I didn't take any photos while I was actually making this, but I have some simple instructions. I don't think this is as durable or as awesome as the one described by Elizabeth (see link above), but it was a quick & easy project and it will help me decide if I want to spend the time and effort to build a nice one like hers.


Supplies:

• Picture frame
• Batting
• Masking Tape
• Scissors
• Helping hand if you have a large picture

1. Measure your frame that you want to cover. Add ~8 cm extra on each side, enough that you could wrap the batting up and tape onto the wood frame on the back (add more if your frame is thicker).  I had some leftover batting from another project that was a pretty tight fit.

2. Clean a nice spot on the floor, lay the batting down, and lay the picture frame face down, centred around the batting

3. If you have a friend, begin at the middle of one edge of and start taping the batting to the frame adn work your way to the outside. Don't stretch the batting too much or it will tear. I put masking tape on the batting to attach to the frame every 10 cm or so, and I folded the corners very neatly so there wasn't a lot of bulge.

View of the back, sorry I didn't get a better one!

4. You're done! Hang it on the wall (or lean it up against the wall as in my case). Ideally I would like to push pins into mine, and I can't really do that without ruining the canvas. So I'll probably make a nicer one when I have the time and energy.

Tadaa! These are some block-of-the-month from my local quilt store

Here's something else I'm working on: 

Pattern: Well-Dressed Bunny by Barbara Prime

Pattern: Well-Dressed Bunny by Barbara Prime

Yarn: Rowan RYC Baby Alpaca (Super Soft!!)

Ravelry link to my project page here

He's almost done, just in time for Easter... just missing some eyes, a mouth and some clothes! Overall it was a good pattern, but it was written for knitting flat and seaming afterwards. I am not very good at seaming so next time I make this I'll try to knit it in the round (and on smaller needles). I also used DK weight yarn instead of worsted, which made my rabbit a little smaller and partially see-thru. I can see the white stuffing inside of him if I look closely!

Take care,
~knittypie

Craft Room Cleanup

Hi!
    So a couple of weeks ago I posted about how messy my craft room was, and my plans to clean it up. There were definitely pros and cons to tackling that room! While I'm happy to report it's in much better condition, I've also quadrupled my to-do list because I found so many half-finished projects! Everyone loves before & after shots, and I wish I had done a better job setting up the camera & taking better photos, but this will have to do.

Behold:

Desk- before

Desk- after. This was a basic cleanup of everything on there (and piled into other things on the bed in to-do piles)

Before, things stashed in the corner

After- A little tidier, but things still stashed in the corner!

before- storage area for magazines and randomness

 

After- magazines organized and purged.

Before- messy closet! There's yarn, fabric, costume jewelry (pink box), roving (white bag) and art supplies all in this photo.

After- This was my favorite place to clean up. Now I can access my yarn & fabric easier.

     It was a daunting task to organize this room, it took almost 5 hours to complete! I worked on one area at a time and sorted into categories on my bed-- To-Do, To Donate, To Keep/put away, and a pile for future sorting. Here are the final areas:

To Do. Yes, this is a giant pile. There are T-shirts, pillow cases, new fabric for a knitting basket, clothes to hem, and clothes to sew. Yikes!

Another view of the To-Do pile, including some vintage lace I found stashed in my closet!

To Donate: There's some stuff here that I know I'll never get around to using, including yarn, magazines & T-shirts.

"Needs more sorting". Yes, I admit I have WAY too much stuff. My fiance says I'm a borderline hoarder, so I've got some cleaning up to do! Most of the stuff in here is for give-away or I'll try & sell some of it. Since I took this photo I've already whittled this pile down to about half of what I'm showing.

     So I ended the day with a semi-clean room and a giant pile of stuff to sort, and an even bigger pile of projects to do. My next couple of blogs will be focused on some of the projects I intend on finishing. Before I close out this post, I wanted to share some photos of some interesting and lovely things that were hiding in my room. Enjoy!

A pile of vintage lace (I need to store these properly).

Some beautiful fabric I picked in in Japan, intended to be used for Japanese Furoshiki.

Some silk-screening on fabric that I made at ACAD

The magazine (and unfinished sweater) that re-introduced me to knitting!

(I never finished this, I didn't know much about knitting and yarn choices, and used Bernat Cotton for this!)

My initial to-do list..... *sigh*.

 Thanks for reading! ~knittypie