13 Ways to Personalize your Page Kit. #5: Sewing

It's time for installment #5 of 13 Ways to Personalize your Page Kit! If you've missed our first four, you can find them here (1, 2, 3, 4). If you're just joining us you might be wondering why 13? Down Memory Lane turns 13 this year and we're finding lots of ways to celebrate. Along with weekly and monthly deals throughout the month of January (check them out on our Facebook page!), we're releasing 13 brand new page kits and doing a blog series on 13 ways to personalize them - 1 post for each of the years we've been blessed to be a part of your memory keeping.

We've just released our 5th page kit of the month and we're on to the 5th way to personalize our page kits: Sewing. There are many ways to use sewing in your paper crafts. You can use straight stitches as borders for photo mats or the pages themselves, you can stitch around the edges of die cuts to give them an extra pop, or you can use different stitches as a design element in your pages. For this page kit, we decided to use sewing to create a quilted look in one of the page features.

Personalization Option #5: Sewing

When deciding which way to amp up these page kits, I often let the page kit do the talking. That was definitely the case with our newest page kit, Baby it's Cold Outside. There are many ways I could have personalize this - adding gems, adding patterned paper, or adding additional colors - but a design feature in the original seemed perfect for a little sewing.

Baby it's Cold Outside layout

The original layout has this great strip with colored blocks going down that looks like a quilted piece. I thought it would be fun to add some sewing to the piece to make it really look quilted. 

I'll show you how we used our sewing machine to achieve this look, but if you don't have a sewing machine or don't want to pull yours out, there are other ways! You can always hand stitch. It's a lot more time consuming and is more difficult to make uniform and straight, but it can be done! There are also a few tools out there that can help with hand stitching. You can use a stitch spacer, commonly used for leather work, to mark your stitches. Then go over it with your needle and thread. 

You can find this one here

We had our sewing machine handy, so we used a machine. Here's how you can do it.

If you're not individually stitching each piece, you can adhere the die cuts first and then stitch over top. If you are stitching each piece, stitch first and adhere later. It's much easier to get into all of the sections and maneuver the pieces when they are not adhered. 

We decided to stitch along the long side of the piece, so we adhered the die cuts first. One thing to keep in mind is adhesive placement. You don't want adhesive where you will be sewing or it may gum up your needle and machine, so be sure to use glue with that in mind. You don't need much adhesive - the stitches will hold it in place - but it will help keep the paper in place when you run it through the machine.

Glue was placed in the center of the square leaving the sides open for sewing

Once your die cuts are assembled, sew through both layers at the same time. 

You'll want to choose a measurement on your sewing machine to follow with the edge of the cardstock to make sure the stitching is straight. Just like you would while sewing fabric.

After you've completed the sewing, trim off any excess thread and then glue those items to your pages. We always run our adhesive all of the stitching to secure the stitches in place.

If you glue over top of your stitches, they'll be secure.

Here is the sewn strip on the page. Isn't it cute! I love the little pop it adds to the layout!

Sewing is such a simple way to add a little extra to your page kits! It's easy and quick and really punches up your die cuts! We stopped at this quilted strip, but how cute would it be to outline the snow and the snowman? Or the snowflakes? The possibilities are endless, here!

That wraps up our 5th option for personalizing your page kits! We'd love to know how you use sewing in your scrapbooking or how you'd make this page kit your own! Let us know in the comments! And stay tuned for more new page kits and more ways to personalize them!