12) A birthday card

Being inherently miserable, I have come to see birthday cards as a bit of a waste. Perhaps they illicit a fleeting smile or a laugh but their ultimate destination is the bin or a forgotten drawer.

A friend’s birthday was coming up, so was inspired to make a reuseable birthday card. I used this stuff that is kind of like double-sided tape but for fabric - I don’t know what it is called. You iron one side onto a piece of fabric, peel off the paper backing and then iron the other side down. I attached some rectangles of this to small pieces of scrap fabric and traced the outline of my letters onto the paper side and cut with scissors.

I ironed the letters onto a piece of cotton canvas to spell out

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Below the letters I made a window out of scrap fabric. The idea here is that you can slide a piece of paper into the window and write whatever message you want on it.

The card is finished off by sewing the cotton canvas to a flowery piece of fabric that I interfaced.

I really hope that the card does get passed on and on… who knows where it will end up?

Anyway, at least I used up some of my fabric scraps, avoided a teeny bit of unnecassary production and had fun making something.