It Came Back

I had heard that the marks made by Frixion pens, which disappear in heat, come back in the cold.  But I didn't think my house was THAT cold!

I made this name tag a little over three years ago.  It used to look pretty good, but now you can see ghosting behind my name.

When I first inked in my name, the letters were upright and a little formal looking.  I ironed them away, and tried again, with a swoop.  Liking it, I free-motioned over them and all was well until who knows when.  

I was ready for an easy fix - just iron them away again.  But I applied heat until the fabric started to smell a little done and I still can't get those marks out.

I guess you only get one shot at this, and you need to make sure your ink gets totally covered.  Makes me a little unhappy that I had stocked up on so many of these magic pens.

I'm going to switch to chalk.  Blech.

I Have a Little Meeting

I have a meeting this afternoon.  It's a small group and we'll be planning an activity for our quilt guild.  Since it's our first meeting, I thought I would make some name tags.

This is how they turned out.  Now let's walk through the process of making them.

I decided to make the name tags 4" x 6", so I used my scraps to sew blocks approximately 9" square.  That gave me wiggle room for picking out the most pleasing part of the block.

These are the rough blocks.  I trimmed them to 4.5" x 6.5", ironed fusible webbing on the back, and cut a hole in the middle.  Then I fused the block to heavy paper.  The paper that shows through the hole is where you write your name.  In the bottom row, you see manila and yellow file folders, then green and blue card stock.

Here's the bases for the name tags, neatly trimmed to 4" x 6".  When I ironed the fused fabric to the cardboard, I used a non-stick applique pressing sheet to protect my ironing board, since the block was a little bigger.  I figured it would be easier to trim the excess fabric than excess cardboard.

When I did a test patch of ironing fabric to the cardboard, it held really well.  When I ironed a pieced block on, the seamed areas didn't want to stick very well.  That's why I sewed a line of stitching around the perimeter and around the opening where you write your name. 

I used a thin ribbon for a neck piece, looped it through buttons on the front, and tied a knot on the back.

These are buttons I bought for one of my Watermelon Purses, but I didn't use them for that purpose after all.  It's nice to have a button bank at home one can dip into at will.

I picked different colored cardboard, depending on how well it coordinated with the block.  I thought this one was going to use blue cardboard, until I saw it with the yellow.

I made a variety of styles, some subdued, like this one.  It was fun finding favorite scraps from favorite quilts.  The leaf fabric across the top is from Spring Stained Glass Quilt.  The dark brown on the left is from Purple Box Quilt.

 

The name tags wound up looking like little faces - the buttons are the eyes, and the cardboard is the mouth, ready to speak the name.  The ribbons make for some wispy hair.

 

It was fun picking out different colored ribbons, but  I used orange thread on all the name tags - it made a nice neutral.

Today I'm in the mood for orange, so I'm going to pick this name tag for myself.  Gotta run - the meeting starts in an hour!

My First Quilt Retreat's Name Tag

At the end of My First Quilt Retreat, I told you I'd show you my name tag today.  Here it is...

All the other name tags I've made, I free motioned my name.  For this one, I made marching letters out of fused fabric.  Of course I still needed to free motion the edges to hold them on nice and tight.  

The name tag is about three inches square, and the letters are one inch tall.  The worst part was cutting that little triangle out of the "A".  The giraffe is another thing I stole from my miniature house.  It used to be a statue on a shelf.  At first it worried me that it was going in a different direction than all the other giraffes, but I soon got used to it.  There's one in every crowd.

Tutorial - Shoe Name Tag

At the end of my "Who Am I?" post, there was a photograph of items that were inspirations for future name tags.  Today I'll walk you through the process of making the first name tag out of this collection of objects.

  

Today's name tag is inspired by the orange bow, which reminds me of a shoelace. Now I need inspiration for a shoe.

 

 I think this one has sufficient visual impact, don't you?  This is an ASICS running shoe sold by Dick's Sporting Goods.  Print a copy of your own shoe inspiration, reducing it to a size suitable for a nametag. 

Create a pattern by turning the paper over and tracing the components.  You can see that I have four that are labelled "F".  Don't ask me why two of them are on the one large section with the lace holes - I don't know why.  But the two lower ones labelled F were originally going to be G and H, and of different fabrics.  It would have been too busy on a tiny shoe, so I changed them to F.

Choose the fabrics you want to use.

Make a key that relates fabric choices to the sections of the shoe.  You can see I changed my mind and made some substitutions along the way.

Now we're in the section of the tutorial that maybe could benefit from extra photographs.  But I'm going to assume you've worked with fusible web before, so I left out the photographs in the interest of a shortened tutorial.

Lay double-sided fusible web over the pattern.  Here's an important tip I learned from trial and error in other fusing projects:  when you trace the components onto the web, trace one piece, then move the fusible web and leave a border around that piece before you trace the next section.  Do NOT  trace all the pieces touching each other, like you did when you created the pattern.  I know that way would be easier, but you'll have no slop room when it's time to put the pieces back together and you often wind up with gaps.

Label your little pieces according to your key.

Iron the fusible web to the back of the fabric, following instructions that came with your web.  Cut out your shoe components.  I forgot to take a picture of the cut-out pieces.  Here's the next best thing.

On the wrong side of the background fabric, I ironed two layers of lightweight fusible interfacing.  Fuse the shoe pieces to the background.  Add a backing fabric before stitching all the way around the edges of each little fused piece of fabric.  I matched the thread to the fabric.  You can do whatever you like.

For the shoelace, I used six strands of embroidery floss.  I could have free motioned a shoelace, but I wanted a 3-D one to make it look more realistic.  It was really hard to get the needle through all those layers!  You can see that the strands are starting to separate.  I'll tell you what I did about that a little later.

I wanted a border on this name tag.  I decided to make it fused to reduce bulk.  Iron a piece of fusible web to a chunk of border fabric.  You'll need enough to cut four strips 5/8 inch wide x the length of each side.  Cut them about an inch longer than you need so you have extra to play with.

Write your name in free-motion stitching.  Cheat like I did, and write it in removable marker first.  My favorite marker is a Frixion pen.

Square up the name tag, leaving a 1/2 inch margin.  Using your removable marker, draw a line 1/4 inch from each edge on the right side of the name tag.  This is the guideline on which you'll lay your border strip.  Doing one edge at a time, iron the border on the front, being sure to use an applique sheet underneath so you don't gunk up your ironing board.  Flip the name tag over, fold over the remainder of the border, and iron it on the back.  Trim the edges of the border even with the edges of the name tag.  Use a satin stitch on the edges because they're going to want to come lose at some future point.

I used clear nail polish in some areas of the shoelace to sort of glue the strands of embroidery floss together.

To attach the name tag to your shirt, you can get a package of pin backs from JoAnn Fabrics or you can use a safety pin.  

I hope you'll make your own name tag, regardless of whether it's a shoe.  Enjoy!

Who Am I?

Here are some name tags I made to wear to quilting clubs and sew days.  That way if I forget who I am, I have a quick way to check. 

This one was inspired by the charms I bought several years ago.  Who knows what I planned to do with them back then?  The dog is a button I bought separately, with nothing in mind.  That's the best way to buy things, with nothing in mind.  Then when you feel like doing something, you just troll through your warehouse and find things that go together and come up with a new idea.

This is the second one I made.  I had a teeny bit of Alexander Henry's "sew now! sew wow!" fabric left.  I used the bits that had the tape measure, and a smidgeon of the selvage.  I need to make more things out of selvages, now that I see the projects that people are coming up with.  Most interesting!  The scissors were added as an afterthought because I didn't space my name correctly when doing the free-motion sewing.  It needed a little something on the right, so I went into my miniature sewing room in my miniature house and stole the scissors.

These objects are inspiration for six more name tags, which I'll share as soon as I finish.  In the meantime, maybe you'd like to take some guesses?




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