1. You’ll want to use double sided wash away tape, instead of pins, to hold your ribbons in place
while you sew. Pins can cause pulls or make your ribbons wavy.
2. While you can use a thread that matches your ribbons, you can also use an invisible thread, provided your machine is ok with this type of thread. I use this in the top and a regular thread in my bobbin, such as Gutterman or Aurifil.
3. I use a 80/12 or 70/10 needle, but you can use 90/14, if this is all you have.
4. You may want to use your walking foot when sewing the ribbons to your fabric.
5. I sew my ribbons using a 1/8” to a 1/16” seam allowance.
6. When you cut your ribbons, you will want to heat seal the ends, so they do not fray. To heat seal, you hold the lighter under the ribbon so that it just heats up and melts the ends of the ribbon. Heat sealing prevents the ribbon from fraying.
**Please use caution when using the lighter, so you don't burn yourself or your ribbons. Using a lighter is at your own risk and Michelle Graham will not be held responsible for any damages or injuries that may happen.
7. Be creative when placing ribbons. You can place them vertical, horizontal, diagonal, criss-cross, etc. There is no right or wrong way to attach them to your pouch or bag.
8. Ribbons will be attached to your panels after you’ve attached your interfacings.
9. You can make bows and glue them onto your pouch, as I have in this photo.
10. If you want to weave your fabrics, as I did on the pouch below, you will need to use a smaller piece of double sided wash away tape to help hold them in place, while you're weaving and placing them onto your fabric. When I stitched them on, I would stop and backstitch as I approached an overlapping ribbon, as you can see in the photo below. This way I didn’t stitch across any overlapping ribbons. This takes a lot of time and patience, but is truly worth it.
11. You can attach a piece of ribbon to your handles. If you’re using my Handles, Crossbody and Wrist Strap Hack, you can use the ribbons to make these double sided. You can find this hack here on my site.
12. You can also use ribbons, sew 2 wrong sides touching to make a wrist strap.
13. You can use ribbon to cover a seam where you’ve joined 2 different fabrics.
14. You can use ribbon to frame a focal point of a fabric.
15. You can fussy cut your ribbon to have a small patch, as I’ve done on this pouch. You’ll want to heat seal both edges so it doesn’t fray.
**Please use caution when using the lighter, so you don't burn yourself or your ribbons. Using a lighter is at your own risk and Michelle Graham will not be held responsible for any damages or injuries that may happen.
Here is the PDF, so you can print a copy to have for your files and refer back to whenever you need.