Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Pattern Weights Tutorial

 


I was visiting the studio of one of our fabulous Sweet Funky Vintage friends, Jessica, recently. Sitting on her cutting table were the interesting looking little doughnutty things. I picked one up and noticed that they were quite heavy and asked her what she does with them. I was delighted with her explanation! Instead of putting pins through her tissue paper patterns to do her cutting, she uses these pattern weights that she made to rest on the patterns to hold them in place. What an a-ha moment! I asked her if I could borrow her idea and make some of my own. I am sharing them here, since Jessica doesn't have her own blog (and she so totally should! You would surely enjoy seeing the pictures of her studio and to-die-for fabric stash!).


 


1) Purchase 20 of the large size, flat washers from your local home-improvement store. I bought mine from Lowe's for $.30 each.
2) Raid the fabric scrap bin for strips of colorful fabric.
3) Place 4 of the washers on top of each other.
3) Wrap the strips of fabric around and around and around and around the washers, overlapping slightly so the the washers are completely covered.
4) Hot Glue the end of the fabric strip to the fabric on the inside of the washer's edge.
5) Ta-da! No more pin holes in your precious out-of-print patterns and now lay-out and cutting is so much faster!!
6) The cuteness of these pattern weights is a total bonus!

 


Thanks, Jessica, for sharing this totally fabulous idea!



Posted by Picasa

5 comments:

Jen said...

total cuteness! I need some SO bad and this will work fabulously! I have been digging around looking for something heavy enough. I have a bunch of old horseshoes from my horses that I thought about stacking and covering but they are awkward and bumpy!! Washers would be fabulous! :)

Mandy said...

Yeah, love that creative Jessica Lane! ;) She's the best (& those are awesome)!

Unknown said...

Great idea and thanks for sharing. I'm about to email you the sneak peeks!

blue corduroy said...

what a great tutorial- beats pinning the whole pattern down. i'll have to give that a try!

how are the cloth napkins coming along for you? last year i did the same thing you were thinking about, i sent my kindergartner to school with a cloth napkin. all her buddies loved it and i ended up making about 10 for the other girls. i loved envisioning lunch time on the picnic tables with an array of colorful napkins spread out like a patchwork tablecloth!!

turtlelamb said...

Hey, that's ME! LOL

Your weights are too cute~ I can't really take credit for the idea though~ it came from someone else, although I can't remember who!!! But thanks for the mention!

and I think I used fabric glue so I didn't even have to fire up the glue gun. ;-) hehehehe