Homemade luxuries - lessons from a 21st century lady: March 2014

I am qualified to write this blog post as I am very much a beginner sewer!
I have done some hand sewing in the past (mostly mending, sewing on buttons etc) but this weekend I got to grips with a mini sewing machine and really enjoyed it. I bought some pretty patterned fabric from Birmingham's RAG market (£2 a meter!) and had a go at some bunting and homemade cards. I was amazed by how quick it is to make projects compared to knitting, but then, they were very simple projects.

Homemade fabric cards

Kitchen bunting

Simple bunting

The first project I tried was simple bunting. You can incorporate a lot more sewing into bunting but as it was my first go I thought I would keep it simple. I won't include instructions for setting up a sewing machine here as it should be included in the manual. I would recommend doing a few practice runs on some scrap fabric or thick paper first though!

You need:

Pinking shears (scissors that cut the fabric in a zigzag so it doesn't fray)

1/4 meter fabric in 2 or more patterns / colours

2 meters bias binding in a pretty colour

Sewing machine threaded up with colour of your choice (contrasting with fabric could be nice or if you want to hide uneven stitches choose the same colour for now!)

My friend gave me her mini sewing machine after upgrading to a proper one. Using the mini was no problem for these projects and she said it cost about £30 so definitely worth it so far!

Instructions

Cut out fabric triangles, about 4 inches long. Make sure they look the same. Cut out enough to fill your 2m bais binding with a good length left over at each end for tying (I did 8).
Fold your bias binding with an edge of the triangle trapped between and as far in as it will go, so the finished bunting will have triangles hanging straight all to the same length
Use your sewing machine (I used straight stitch as my mini one only does that!) to sew all along the length of the bias binding, trapping the fabric triangles in as you go. Voila!

Finished bunting

Handmade cards

For these cards I cut out little bits of fabric and used the sewing machine to stitch them onto plain cards, much like in my other homemade cards posts. I think these are my favourite though and by far the quickest to make. I'll be looking through Pinterest for some more inspiration for my next batch!