While making this quick ribbon garland, I was really eager to try out a fun feature on the Juki DX7. You can set it to stitch without the foot pedal. WOW! No feet!
If you unplug the foot pedal lead, you can use a button at the front of the machine to start and stop stitching and then control the speed using the tortoise and hare slider. I decided to try out this feature making a simple ribbon garland for my children’s birthday party.
I have a boy and a girl 6 and 4 and we decided to have a joint summer birthday party with their school friends before school broke up for the holidays. We planned to fill the garden with toys and light our pizza oven and make the most of this gorgeous sunny weather.
Having brought some bunting and pinwheel decorations off the internet, I wanted to make a quick ribbon garland of my own to create a little fun on their play tower.
I love working with ribbons for decoration. So I was excited when I got the idea for this quick ribbon garland. Ribbons flutter so perfectly! I envisaged attaching something over the doorway of the slide so that the kids could burst through the ribbons as they shot down. The coloured ribbons were easy to pick up from a haberdashery store. I got 5 meters of each. It was just a guess at the time but it worked out beautifully. Here are some simple directions if you wanted to recreate something similar.
Quick Ribbon Garland Directions
I began with this wider piece of ribbon wider 1 inch piece of ribbon. I planned to fold it in half and slip the brightly coloured ribbons inside the fold.
I cut my ribbon lengths mixed. One set was a meter long and the the rest were in differing increments (70cm / 60cm/ 85cm) I wanted the random lengths so that they would hang differently.
This was a slow activity as I individually placed the end of each coloured ribbon into the fold of the binding ribbon. I found this actually much easier using the hand control stitching rather than the foot pedal.
This meant that that I simply pressed the go button on the front of the DX7 which then ran over the one coloured ribbon in between the binding. I stopped it as soon as it went over the ribbon end, before inserting the next. It was very stop-and-go but having the setting on the turtle meaning the slowest setting it made it really easy. Happily, it only too me 15 minutes to sew it all together.
For my part, I enjoyed putting a new feature on my Juki DX7 to good use. As you can see, the visual result is fantastic and as a party decoration, it fit in perfectly. This quick ribbon garland turned out just like I wanted. And yes, the kids loved it! Find out more on Emily’s lifestyle blog: Brick Dust and Glitter