Sewing with Paper
Today is the last day of school for many kids down here in Texas. As I’ve mentioned not for my own girls, their school is still going on until June 11th. I have been trying to search for fun ideas for this summer to keep from the “I’m Bored” syndrome that seems to hit about a day or so after school is out. I was so excited to see Joann’s is having a beginning sewing class for kids that I am most likely going to stick at least 2 of my girls in. It is actually only 1 day for 3 hours but my thought is if they learn the very basics from someone else then it will help all of us when they want to pull out all the sewing machines in our house. Yes, I said ALL the sewing machines. We have a total of 5 sewing machines in our house right now. One is actually my mother in laws but still it is in my house.
Your thinking there goes Kari again, off the paper arts category. Really I’m not. Sewing machines are great for paper arts, too. You can use them for scrapbook pages, card embellishments, to make little mini books with, the possibilities are endless. It is a lot simpler then you would think to. Even if you don’t know how to sew you can sew on paper. Even if your machine only does one stitch and only goes forward or back. Just sew a border around a photo or sew the corners of a piece of paper on a layout. You can use the same color thread as your paper for a subtle look or use a contrasting color for a more vibrant pop out effect.
Still not sold on the idea a sewing machine could be easy? Well then there are paper piercing tools out there in the paper arts world you might like. These tools let you poke holes in your paper and then come back and hand stitch with thread. Or even leave it with just the holes. You can buy different paper piercing templates. Okay, so that is still too much effort? How about just hand drawing stitch lines with a good pen. Whatever tool you decide to use you should try this technique just to see if you like it. You might be surprised.
May 24th, 2007 at 12:35 pm
I’ve run across paper sewing before and have never tried it so I hope you’ll share pictures! I’m especially interested in trying it with miniscrapbooks!
And four sewing machines (I won’t charge you with having five since one isn’t yours) is a bit much, don’t you think?