I wish I could come up with these fantastic ideas on my own. I also wish I would learn to book mark the sites where I find these fantastic ideas so I can heap loads of credit on the creators because I never find them again. I was surfing the web one afternoon and I came across a site where the designer made cards using that embroidery floss.
I clicked on her patterns and saw they were hand drawn. The lightbulb in my brain that often has cobwebs on it went off and I thought, “Self, you can do this with MTC!”
I have one of these things:
You roll it around your paper and it pokes holes in it so you can sew your own cards. I’m a little challenged though and my lines came out crooked and it annoyed me.
Unfortunately I can’t share the files I made since I don’t think the Lettering Delights peeps would be too happy with me if I did, but I can show you how to do it. You know that whole teach you to fish instead of giving you one saying? Just don’t hit me with the fish or anything, k?
So here’s what I did. I opened up MTC and went to my lettering delights folder. Since Christmas is coming sooner than I want it to, I went for those cut it files and found this one:
Simple Christmas tree, right?
I opened the rhinestone dialog box (ctrl+k) and started fooling around with the settings. I picked the .0750″ stone size because they seem to be good sized holes to sew with. I played with that spacing bar until I saw that the dots covered most of the corners. I found it will change with different designs you do so fool with that cool little slider and hit “preview on mat” to see the changes. Don’t be a Deb and be sliding that slider around and wonder why nothing is happening because I forgot to click Preview on Mat.
I unchecked “delete original” because I wanted to have a line to work with should I need to adjust any of my circles. And I can see areas where I need to.
I clicked accept.
Go over to your layers box and click the “+” by the Christmas Tree layer. It will change to a “-” and you will see the paths broken down below. Click on the RS one and MTC will select all the circles.
Break apart the circles. (It’s ctrl + something. I really don’t know right now and am too lazy to open up MTC to look. I’ll go with ctrl + b for break, but don’t quote me on that, k? And hey, I knew the rhinestone one by heart)
See how the corners don’t have a circle? They need one so that the image will look right when you sew it. Any time you have to change an angle, you want the little circles there. So select a circle and move it to the corners. You’ll find you have to move a few of the others to make it look spaced out even, but it only took me a minute or two to arrange them how I wanted them.
This is where having the original path of the tree came in handy so I could make sure I was moving circles and not screwing up the design.
Once you are happy, move the original path away (and delete it or close the little eye ball) so you can select all the circles and join them again (going to have to assume it’s ctrl+j for join).
I used 110 lb white paper and it really looked nice.
Here’s the finished tree:
I sewed them using DMC floss and doing a back stitch. I don’t even begin to know how to explain how to do a back stitch. I didn’t even know I knew how to do it, but apparently I do. I don’t cook and I’m not sure how to work my iron…or even if I have one, but I knew a back stitch.
Here are some other designs I made. These are all lettering delights graphics too. I’m not going to lie, I don’t like how the pumpkin turned out. I think I needed to make the stem a little longer or something. Also I can see I didn’t adjust the coloring right in the pumpkin card photo because that’s orange thread, not red.
Here are the cards I made:
The teacher in me has to give you a couple of ideas to do with your preschooler/kinder age kiddos… You can make a design with bigger circles (I would make them at least .156″ if not 1/4″) and have it cut out on a full piece of card stock. Buy some of those plastic yarn needles they sell at Michaels and have the kids sew the designs with yarn. This is such good practice for building fine motor skills that kids (especially boys!) need for writing and it also helps them build tracking skills for reading.
You can also do this with letters of the alphabet. Kids who need that tactile experience can use them to help them learn their letters.
Kids really get into this project and I kid you not, it will keep them quiet and occupied for a good half hour to forty-five minutes. And I’m all about that.
Well, that’s all from me for this month. My poor bloggie has been neglected but I’ve been super busy at work. After next month, things will ease up and I’m hoping to get some stuff going again.
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