I’m throwing a baby shower next weekend for one of my good friends who is also expecting a little girl this Spring. Since I’ve got a lot to do to prepare for my own new baby, I wanted a simple theme that would be a breeze for me to pull together.
Do you remember the circle garland I made for the Tangled Birthday Party? Yes, the same one that I demonstrated on The Martha Stewart Show. Well with those easy garlands in mind I decided to make the baby shower theme pink circles. I will be making a bunch of garlands (12 to be exact), in three different shades of pink, to create a backdrop for the food table at the shower (that’s what that big stack of circles is for).
The circle garland also inspired the invitation, which features three circles sewn on in a sort of mini garland. These invites came together very quickly, and my favorite part is you get to recycle paper scraps to make them!
First layout your invitation text: I left-aligned my wording which is balanced out by the circles that are right-aligned at the top. A simple, san-serif font (like Helvetica) works best. My invite cards were approximately 5×7 inches so I could fit two-up on a page using landscape orientation. Print the invite cards in black and white on cardstock, and then cut down to size.
Use Martha’s Large Circle Cutter to make the 4-inch circles for the garlands, and be sure to save your scraps to cut out circles for the invitations using a one-inch punch.
To make the sewing less stressful, I first glued the circles in place.
I used my trusty triangular ruler as a guide to get the circles on there straight.
Once all three circles are glued on, the invitations are looking cute, but the perfect finishing touch is to run them through your sewing machine using a straight stitch. I love to sew on paper, in fact I use my sewing machine more for paper than fabric, but do remember that paper is less forgiving since once you poke that needle through the paper the hole is there to stay. It’s a good idea to test out sewing first on a scrap piece of paper until you figure out where to place the invites so they’ll feed correctly with your needle going straight through the center of the circles.
I was initially thinking of using gray thread since that is the accent color for the party, but after a trial run I decided the gray was far too noticeable. I swapped out for white thread and was much happier with the result — a more subtle touch that is about texture rather than color.
so simple and so adorable!!
Love, love, love it! Only recently have I started sewing fabric more than paper.
These are SO cute and could be used for so many different types of parties!! Great job!
*LOVE* Cannot wait to try sewing paper! If the shower theme colors are pink & gray you have to check out this adorable homemade gift idea from Make It & Love It https://www.makeit-loveit.com/2011/02/knit-receiving-blanketknit-baby-hats.html
That polka-dot blanket is ADORABLE! We’ll see if I have time to make one by the shower, if not perhaps I should just make one for my new little one. Thanks so much for sharing :)
Those invites are fantastic! I just made a scalloped circle garland for my daughter’s rainbow birthday party (not posted on my blog yet).
I’m so jealous that you got to meet Martha! I bet that it was amazing!
When you sew on paper like this for this invitation, do you have to backstitch? sorry for a dumb question…i’ve never sewn on paper.
That’s OK — it’s actually a good question. I don’t back stitch when sewing paper because it doesn’t really need to stand up to washing like fabric would. Plus a good thing to remember when stitching paper is that it isn’t as forgiving as fabric, meaning once a hole is poked… it’s there. Whereas you can take stitches out of fabric and it sort of goes back together. So you’ll probably want to plan a few extras in case of any sewing mishaps. Don’t let this intimate you though. Sewing paper is easy and I swear I really do sew more paper than fabric ;)