Sweet Talk with Jenny Peterson

Welcome to Sweet Talk for April – this is a time when we get to know one of our SugarPeas just a little better, as well as learning some tricks and tips straight from their craft room! Today we get to visit with the fabulous Jenny Peterson!

You know Jenny for her AMAZING coloring and enviable designs, but did you know she’s hilarious!? Don’t take my word for it…here she is in her own words!

I’m Feeling…

FULL!!!! After a weekend of Easter Dinner’s with our families, I am STUFFED!! I need to seriously cleanse this body and live on some greens and shakes for the next week! LOL!

I’m Wishing…

My pants weren’t so tight!

I’m Loving…

Having my boys home from school for a few days during our little Easter break and not being a slave to the alarm clock.

I’m Creating…

Actually, we are doing some renovations and adding a larger walk-in pantry to our kitchen and a larger laundry room, so we are creating a HUGE mess from drywall dust!

I’m Reading…

Just bought Divergent, so I am going to join the masses and see what all this hype is about 😉

I’m Watching…

Just going to settle in for the Game of Thrones episode from last night that I have PVR’d…I am in love with Tyrian Lanaster!

Today I am going to show you a few tips for adding machine stitching to your cards.

The first thing I usually do is get my image ready, settle on a card layout, and get my paper cut out. Then I can decide on which parts of the card I want to add sewing to. I made this Easter card using Bushel & A Peck.

 Now that I’ve figured out where I want the stitching to go, I can add the adhesive and adhere the layers together. It’s really important not to apply adhesive to where you are going to be sewing. This can gum up your machine and you’ll need to take it in for a tune-up. Don’t ask me how I know this 😉 lol. I use a regular sewing machine, equipped with a denim needle and thicker thread (button and upholstery thread). I go back and forth between fabric and paper, as I dabble in quilting as well, and have never found paper sewing to be hard on my machine.

I always just kind of ‘eyeball’ where to stitch. You’ll get a feel for this as you use your machine more and get comfortable with sewing on paper.

When you are finished sewing, you may want to get a nice finished look on your cardfront and not have any loose threads. This depends on your cardmaking style and maybe the theme of your card. Sometimes I like to leave loose threads if I am creating a shabby kind of card. But I am going to show you how to achieve that clean and polished look with no threads.

You’ll have a total of 4 threads showing (if you ended at your initial starting point, coming full circle), two off the card front and two off the card back.

Turn your card over and gently pull on the bottom threads (bobbin threads). You should see loops from the front threads being pulled through the needle hole towards the back of the card. Using your paper-piercer, gently pull those loops right on through to the back.

Now you should have all four threads at the back of your card and you can go ahead and adhere the threads down and trim if needed.

And here is the finished card! Machine stitching can really take your cards to the next level!

Jenny used A Bushel & A Peck from our Sweet P collection on her AMAZING card! You can find it in the online shoppe HERE.