Saturday, December 20, 2008

Doing It The Hard Way

That seems to be my motto.  I'm not sure why!  If there is more than one way to do a task, you can bet I will choose the harder one!  Not on purpose, mind you - I am usually trying to pick the lazy way!

Case in point.  Working on the memory book, I decided that prairie points was the only way to frame this photo.  No real reason; it's just what I decided.  I'm making it up as I go along, you know! 

Two problems came up right away:  (1) working with small squares of fabric would be pretty tedious, and (2) I've never actually done prairie points before!  But - I have worked with ribbon before, so let's make a prairie point-ish ribbon border!

PC190001

Now, I'm not about to cut individual strips of ribbon.  So you will notice that the inside loops are MUCH bigger than the framing loops!  With two colors I would fold one, stitch part way, loop around the other color and fold, stitch, loop.  Repeat.  I'm pretty sure that this method took just as long as real PPs would have taken.  Nonetheless, I persevered ('cause I'm stubborn that way) and following a careful trim we have a decent border.

PC190003

And a layer of ribbon to cover the cut edges . . .

PC190004

Uh-oh.  I hate wasting ribbon!  (Yeah, like it's so rare and expensive.  NOT!) 

PC190002  Most of you would probably just toss this little pile of scraps.  Not me!  Now I am working on figuring what to do with very short scraps of ribbon!   I'm sure I'll come up with something - and you can bet it will be the most tedious, difficult, and frustrating project I can think up!

5 comments:

Suze said...

I love how the praire points turned out though...the little loopies at the tips are really cute...

Get a clear glass ornament and stuff the ribbon pieces in..I bet it would look cute...

Vicki W said...

It looks fantastic - it's a great effect.

Paula Hewitt said...

the prairie points look great - the ribbon was a cool idea. i have the same problem with overly compicating things while trying to be lazy. what about weaving the ribbons and fusing them to fabric?

Orice said...

The Praire Points are a great idea. Using ribbon is inspired. I might try that next time.

Annie said...

I was recently googling to find out about 'prairie points', but I didn't know what to call them. Thanks for the clue. Now I can read up on them. Love the way you used ribbon for this.