Sew (or don't sew) Sunday!

I thought I'd cap off our fabric/stitching blog week with one more fabric project. This sort of project can have as little or as much sewing as you want it to. I made mine with absolutely no sewing to show you that it can be done...but of course you clever crafters usually find a way to customize any project!

It all started with my little friend Paisley (how adorable is she??) who celebrated her first birthday at the beginning of the month. Her mama is quite adept at many crafts and is one person I know for certain who loves receiving hand-crafted goodness. But what to make?

I loved the idea of making something related to her birthday, but that could be modified to fit the decor of her bedroom. I knew I wanted something more than a framed photo, but different than a scrapbook page. How about combining the best of both?I had this frame hanging in my garage, a fat quarter of some yummy Amy Butler fabric and a few scraps from another project I'd made. Now, Miss Paisley is the kind of girl who always has a little bow or flowered headband on....so of course I wanted some bows and flowers--enter the stash of Prima flowers I've long held on to and never used up. You'll notice I've left some blank areas-as this is a gift, and her mom is crafty, I wanted her to have the option of some customization.

The process:

1. Cut an unbacked cork board to fit the frame specifications
2. Wrap cork with some batting (I just used some quilters low loft batting I had on hand)
3. Trim and and adhere wrapped edges (use a stapler, glue, tape, combination of any of those methods)
4. I chose to make a "no sew" fabric pocket to hold trinkets and/or birthday cards with a bit of my left over fabric. Just fold it in half and wrap around like above with the fold at the top making a nice clean edge. Had I been aiming to sew a bit, I might have put a 1/4" seem across the top of the pocket or even added a little ric rac trim.
5. At this point, you can put your little memory board into the frame. I chose to tape all the way around it and then add a plain paper backing--which really gives a nice finished feel.
   
6. Now it's time to personalize it. The only thing limiting you on this is of course your creativity. The sky is the limit! As you can see, I chose to embellish some tacks, use some flowers and a bit of left over fabric for a bow. I also chose not to tack or glue down the actual photos so that as Paisley grows her mom can switch out the pictures with ease. The tacks will, unfortunately, leave a bit of a hole in the fabric, so I used them for decoration purposes mostly.
   

I hope that with this blog week you've thought of a million ways you could use fabric in your scrapbooks, cards and projects without feeling like you have to be adept at sewing. I hope that if you do love sewing you learned a new technique (thank you, Dav!!) like I have. Make sure you continue to check back on the post below this and get yourself acquainted with all the amazing challenges happening this week!