Create.

I think that word is a sentence in and of itself. What more do you need to add really?! Perfect motto for the sewing room. Or as a gift for one of your gorgeous friends’ birthdays.



I may have mentioned before that I’m kind of loving my staple gun. I have a bunch of blank canvases and I am putting them to good use! Let’s be honest, my actual quiting skills are not up to par when it comes to dense quilting for a wallhanging. So turning things into a canvas works for me.

This is my first attempt at reverse applique. And let me just say, it was nowhere near as hard or scary as I thought! Okay it was a little bit scary when cutting the grey fabric away, hoping desperately I hadn’t just shoved the seam ripper through my background fabric as well. But it worked.

I read over a few different tutorials and picked out the parts that made sense to me and got started. I made my word on Pic Monkey (font is “Special Elite”) and printed it out.


Then I traced that onto fusible webbing – mirror reverse. Because if I traced it as it looks now, I would have had a backwards canvas and that would have made me cry. In hindsight, when printing, I should have tried mirror or reverse printing – would have made it easier than tracing the letters onto the back side of the paper, and then again onto the fusible webbing. Lesson learned. Then I ironed the fusible webbing onto the rainbow dot chevron fabric (Frippery by Thomas Knauer) which came in my awesome scrap pack from Hawthorne Threads.



Layered the grey fabric on top, pinned the living daylights out of it and got down to the sewing. I used a small stitch and sewed on the lines of the letters – sewing on the interfacing side – basically on the wrong side!. Bit nervewracking. But then, I paper piece and that’s sewing on the wrong side too!
My starts and stops leave a bit to be desired but I know better for next time



Then the hard bit. Using a seam ripper and teeny scissors, I had to carefully cut the inside of the stitching out. I was a bit worried I’d either rip through the fabric, or cut through the seams. Fortunately I managed to do neither! Woohoo!

Added in a bit of batting behind it to make the canvas look nice, staple gunned like a crazy woman and tada! A happy canvas is done! In less than a few hours. Awesome
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It reminds me of those artworks you do as a kid were you colour the background in rainbow pastels, and then over the top in black. Scrape the black away for a “magic” painting. Well this is my “magic” sewing!

I hung it on the lounge room wall to take photos and my children were quite impressed! And rather disappointed when it was later taken down to be wrapped. I think I need to make one for myself now!

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