Emily's Tutorial

12/14/2010

Emily's Tutorial

I have a fairly simple tutorial for you, the results look anything but simple. Don't you love that kind of project?

I like to check out quilts on Flickr and found a beautiful one from Oh, Fransson! that intrigued me. I wondered how she'd been able to piece it. I studied it for a while then figured out she hadn't pieced it, it was a bunch of strips of strips. I'm going to how you how to translate it into a paper project, it could be a background for a page or a card, or it's thick enough, you could turn it into a mini book cover like I did.

1. You'll want to cut a bunch of strips, I made sure mine were not nice and straight. The wonky angles will make for a much more interesting project.

2. Line the strips up, attaching each one to a sheet of cardstock. The entire strip needs to be attached because you'll be cutting it up, and if it's not all attached, you'll lose bits and pieces. I used the American Crafts This to That .25" Double-sided Tape.

3. At this point, you could machine stitch down the strips, but I wanted to see what would happen if I waited until the end of the project.

4. Go back to your trimmer and do a second round of wonky strip cuts.

5. Cut those strips in half (or round about half, it's not important to be exact on this one).

6. Attach the half strips on a new sheet of cardstock, move strips around until you are happy with the design.

7. Stitch every seam, this looks like it will take a long time, but it didn't take me more than 10 minutes. By doing this stitching last, I found I got a stronger piece. When I saw how solid it was, I decided instead of using it as a background, I'd turn it into a mini book cover, it was the perfect weight because of it's really three sheets of cardstock/patterned papers all stuck together.

8. I trimmed the block down to a rectangle, used my scorer tool to fold it in half, punched some holes and added some sheets of paper for my Christmas planning activities. I've used it already!

Pretty easy, huh?