Friday, April 23, 2021

I thought I might have a short day in the sewing room but it hasn’t worked out that way. I was working on cards again; getting the quilting done on the five of them was quite quick.

I usually do an envelope backing on the cards but I decided after my last batch that I would go back to putting a binding on the cards. The envelope is a bit faster but the quilting is more difficult when it has to be done after the card is more or less finished. And I haven’t been terribly happy with the look of them – it is harder to keep the pattern centred.

I was part of a Zoom meeting recently and the presenter was making small landscape cards. She used various textured yarns around the edges rather than putting on a binding. I wanted to try it but I used all my textured yarns in my recent scarves and afghan. So I wondered if ribbon would work.

I found a wide enough ribbon but I didn’t get very far before deciding it wasn’t going to work. The ribbon wasn’t soft enough to do a good corner and I felt like even if I had the ribbon on the front and back the unfinished edge of the card would show through the top, bottom and sides. The ribbon wasn’t wide enough to do an extra seam to close those edges all the way around. Lace might be easier to work with but I think I’d have the same issue with the unfinished edge showing unless it was a wide lace. I may experiment with the idea another time but for now I want to get these cards done.

I still have three cards to stitch the binding on and there will be lots of hand stitching but I have all evening.