Hand made sew-in labels

More and more people are talking about making their own Christmas gifts this year. That's exciting to me, because I've always liked doing that and the gifts were always well-received. This attitude shift could be a really good, meaningful Christmas for a lot of people.

That in mind, I wanted to share a handy tip you could use if you are planning to sew anything and want a nice looking label for your handcrafted item.

We hand-wrote our website on the inside of the band on each PlateWrap back when PIOP started. This worked fine for a while, until I realized it was time to get a better sew-in label. I was getting ready for a craft show and needed something really fast. (And really economical, since I had already spent a lot of my budget on plates and fabric.)

No time to design and order machine-printed labels, I stopped in to see Lisa at Stampin' Cat, a local stamping store, to see if she could help. She smiled and pointed me to a dabber bottle full of water-based paint that is permanent on fabric.

Permanent fabric paint for rubber stamping, originally uploaded by passitonplates.

I used this dabber paint with a silicone stamp I'd had made earlier. The labels were 7" long strips cut from a spool of 3" wide white satin ribbon that I picked up at Michael's for about $4.

To make the labels, I just dabbed the paint onto an index card, then tapped the stamp into it. I practiced stamping on the index card to get a feel for how much paint to load onto the stamp so I didn't get blobby results on the ribbon.

I use an index card as my palette, originally uploaded by passitonplates.

Ok, it's a little blobby, but readable. And instead of being all anal retentive and picky about the results I reminded myself that this is a handcrafted item and small variations are part of the label's character and should be considered a natural part of the PlateWrap.

Or something like that. Basically I told myself,

"Self, you have got to relax and let it be."

Several stamped labels on 3" wide satin ribbon, originally uploaded by passitonplates.

Nifty, huh?

Silicone rubber stamp, originally uploaded by passitonplates.

Oh darn it, I didn't think to take pictures of the labels in the PlateWraps.

To finish the labels, I folded each one in half around the band that encircles the back side of each PlateWrap, and sewed them in place. I use a serger, so that binds the raw edges on the labels. It looks clean and nice.

If you get a Pass It On Plate or see a PlateWrap floating around out there, check and see if there's a nice wide satin ribbon label sewn inside. (Not all PlateWraps have these.)

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