Give Dad a Hand (or Two)

I was looking for something I could do for the 2 grandpas and 1 dad for Father's Day this year.  Here is how it turned out

I found this cutey online from Roots and Wings Co and immediately pinned it on Pinterest.  Go visit her blog, the full tutorial is there!  She did a much better job than I did on the project, so seriously, 

go check her out!

I'll begin by saying I have a new-found respect for quilters.  To all the quilt people out there:  You are an amazing bunch with heaps of patience.  Patience I will never know.  This one little project made me nuts!

Here are some of the things that went wrong and could have been avoided by simply following directions:

I traced my kids' hands onto a piece of paper

instead of directly onto the back of the fabric/iron-on adhesive.

This added a step and made cutting it out more challenging. 

And then I ironed the sewable iron-on adhesive directly to my ironing board.  Doh!

I think I got all the goo off.  I guess we'll find out when I iron my husband's work shirt tonight.

Here are the hands about to be fused to the backing

I zigzag stitched around the hands (and broke two needles because I was using the wrong foot)

And here they are after they've been quilted

I used the piece of glass as a guide to cut the edges off.  Probably not the safest idea to use glass as a guide, but it worked.

The tutorial recommended using spray adhesive to attach it to the back of the frame.  It didn't work for me, so I fired up the glue gun.

That worked great!  Something went right!  Oh happy day.

I tried painting the frames with chalkboard paint and writing the saying on it (in the interest of saving time).  Two words:  JACKED UP!  The chalky writing looked really messy.  So messy I won't even show a picture.

So I painted over it with some dark blue, painted the words on with a small brush, and called it a Father's Day.  It isn't perfect, but it might just make my Father-in-Law cry.  Now to do this twice more for the hubs and my dad.  I better get sewing.

This would be adorable done with paper in a scrapbooking style.  I'm not much of a scrapper, but I'm betting a few of you out there are.  Let me know if you try this with fabric or paper.

Be sure to check out the "Link Party" page, I'll be posting this at a lot of the parties this week.

Thanks for visiting!

Blessings,

Jamie