Make Your Own Ribbon Bulletin Board

This post is nothing new, but maybe it will still give you an idea.

I get three fashion magazines that come to my house. I guess I'm old school and like to see trends and fashion ideas in actual print vs. having a Pinterest board (which. . .yes. . .I have some of those too). Anyways, I used to clip out my favorite ideas and keep them in a 3-ring notebook. Well. . .the main problem with that is that I never look at it! It stays tucked away on its shelf out of sight. That doesn't really help me. I realized that I need something more immediate. I needed a bulletin board.

Before I even started pricing cork boards and push pins, I realized that I had all the materials to make a ribbon bulletin board. Why go out and buy something that I could just make? That's what this post is going to show you: How to make your own ribbon bulletin board.

First of all, I had this old canvas frame that wasn't being used. You don't have to have one covered in canvas. (But let's face it. If you are female and have friends, chances are you have been to one of those group painting classes and you probably have an outcome of that event at home right now that you HATE, so. . .why not repurpose it?) :) It just needs to be made of wood so you can push staples into it--you could probably also use a decent piece of cardboard. I also grabbed a piece of shiny pink table cloth to cover it, but you can use any fabric. (You may remember that I used this same fabric to make a sewing machine cover.)

I laid the fabric down and cut around it leaving about two to three inches around. That would give me just enough to fold up around the frame.

Then I spayed some adhesive to the back of the fabric. You don't have to do this part, but it helps to keep the fabric from slipping as you attach it to the frame.

Then I folded up the edges of the fabric around the frame.

Okay, I would advise you if you do this to use a staple gun or AT LEAST a normal sized stapler. All we have in our house is this tiny Swingline stapler, and. . .it took a while because about only one in five staples actually took!

This is after all the fabric had been stapled up around the frame.

Next I took some ribbon and diagonally stretched it across the frame. I stapled either end to the frame.

After stapling the ribbon to the sides, I pulled and stapled the tail parts around to the back.

And that's basically it. You just keep adding ribbon in rows until you are satisfied with how it looks.

Be sure to go back the other direction.

Almost finished. I'm pretty proud of how good it looks as I didn't measure distances or anything. Not bad for eyeballing and using an almost worthless stapler!

This is the back. You can see I stapled all the ribbon tails to the back.

The last step was to add buttons to each intersection of ribbon. This just keeps the pictures in place that you tuck into the ribbon.

All done!

Well. . .almost.

Now it's on the wall, and I can easily see inspiring ideas. 

(Right now I'm into collars.)

My plan is that once this is filled up, I can take a picture of it and put that into an archive of sorts, take these down, and start a new board. I plan on doing this twice a year or so. Anyways, we'll see. For now, I like being able to see my ideas easily!

And then the obligatory social media question:

What do you/will you use your bulletin board for?

The End!

Valentine's Day Special: Colorblock Western Shirt with Owls

Remember last year when I made this for my baby?

My friend, Tina, recently gave me a bunch of fabric and notions, so I was going through my current inventory to make room, when I came across this little gem in my pattern repertoire. I had forgotten that I've been wanting to make my husband a western shirt for ages. He likes that retro look, so this shirt was a perfect choice for him. I know it's like. . .two weeks early from Valentine's Day, but. . .I wanted to make sure that I got it done during a time when I wasn't busy, and. . .this gives him time to get me a good present. (Mmmmuhahahaha...)

Here it is! I'm not blogging the process because. . .it's just a pattern, and that's boring. Plus, the whole shirt took me about 12 hours from start to finish and this blog would be a book. I will, however, go over some details. First off, see how the plaids on either side of the buttons match up? Also, my husband is super skinny and tall. (He is so tall and skinny that the daughter of some friends of ours calls him "Tree.") Anyways, he can never find shirts with sleeves that are long enough, because apparently skinny means that you have short arms in the fashion industry, so that was something I considered when cutting out the patterns.

I found the owls on www.embroiderydesigns.com. My husband also loves owls, but as he is a man, I needed to find an owl that wasn't obnoxious and girly.

Most embroidery machines have the capability of flipping the design.

This butterfly collar is for REAL, y'all. I was able to use the last piece of iron-on interfacing that I had for this collar, but when it came to reinforcing the button strip and the cuffs, I ended up just using an extra piece of fabric inside. (By the way, if a pattern calls for iron-on interfacing and you don't feel like running to the store, you can always just use a piece of slightly stiffer fabric. Just make sure you pin it well [or stay-stitch, which I never do because it's a waste of time] before sewing so it doesn't move around. That's the advantage of iron-on.)

I made sure that all the buttons were sewn on with the crown design at the top.

In retrospect, I should have made the button holes vertical instead of horizontal, but they still do their job. I love my Husqvarna machine. It does perfect button holes. (Blogger won't let me center this picture, that's why it's off to the side.)

For some reason, Blogger won't let me type above this picture, so. . .Anyways, here's the cuff! Isn't it great?! 

I learned a new seaming technique: flat fell. The pattern called for it along the shoulder to armpit seam. It's a little crooked because I had to top stitch it from the inside. It bothers me, but not enough to take it out.

This is what a flat felled seam looks like on the inside. It's nice and clean. You are supposed to do this technique on seams that see a lot of wear. In fact, the inside seams of jeans have this stitch.

Here is the inside of the shirt.

This is the seam along the sides of the shirt. It was supposed to be flat felled too, but I got lazy and just did my "surger" stitch that I typically do on jersey. Actually, I didn't want to have top stitching down the sides. I felt like that would be overkill.

The back.

I wish I would have had those pearl button snaps that you find on most western shirts, but I didn't. Anyways, I tried to nod to them at least by putting a smaller button at the collar.

The End!