Tip & Technique Tuesday | Elementary ruching of fabric swatches

Welcome to another Tip & Technique Tuesday!

I'm one of "those" people. The ones who fear their sewing machines but love the look of stitching. I've mostly contented myself with the knowledge that my layouts will not be adorned with the lovely stitching that I admire on others' work. I am happy to leave my sewing machine under its cover and hidden away where it cannot sense my fear.

But. For today's layout, because I love you all so much and because my layout was feeling flat and because I just love fondling the awesome Ormolu fabric swatches...I've braved my sewing supplies to do a wee bit of ruching. (Okay, please don't laugh at me if this is completely obvious to you. And bear in mind that I still couldn't bring myself to use the sewing machine. Sorry. It scares me.) Yes, I know many of you are probably old hat at this, but for those of you who similarly find yourself hiding from sewing or just want to see a fun way to use the fabulous fabric swatches, I wanted to share. It actually turned out well and I came away injury free. :) 

So. I simply picked a nice thread in a contrasting color (because if I'm going to go through the trouble of using sewing stuff, I want people to *know* I did, lol). I doubled it up so that my orange would show a bit better and knotted the end. Then, I just started from one side and stitched to the other, using the way simple stitch that they teach you when you're a kid (before you develop your fear of the sewing machine if you're me). I arranged it on my layout as I wanted (scrunching here and there until I was happy, not too scrunched in this case, though I can totally see making these more dimensional!) and then tied off the end. Voila. (Note, the fabric swatches are a perfect material for this...nice and durable but not too thick...so many possibilities!)

I was so pleased with the result that I grabbed a piece of ribbon and repeated the process...making sure to cut my initial piece of ribbon longer than the spot I wanted it, but otherwise just doing the exact same thing as with my fabric swatch. Here's what I ended up with:

Just a simple layout about my boys' first day at our one-day-a-week homeschool program. I love how the very basic ruching adds just enough texture to a fairly blocky layout. And, yes, you can now laugh at the fact that I'm proud of myself for actually using some of my sewing stuff. ;)

- Amanda
 

Ormolu supplies used: 

2-day Hooray Fabric Swatches

Go Ticket Book

Blank Ticket Tags

Comments

[Jingle]

This is SUPER cute!