I am Gwen Schoen and in our new home in Garden section at the Sacramento Bee, we are going to be featuring an occasional craft project.
Today, we are going to tell you how to make a French memo board, which is a fun little organizing project because it is inexpensive, it is very easy to do and it is really handy because you can stash little things that you need to take care of like letters you need to mail, photographs that you are going to send on. It is a fun project because you can change the colors and the decorating to match the way that your kitchen or your office is decorated. So, you can do that by changing the fabric or the ribbons or the buttons on the mat.
You can use any size of board that you want but what works fast is a 16x20 stretched canvass. This is the type of canvass that you would buy for an oil painting project. They are very inexpensive and you can find them at most craft stores.
So, we are starting with a 16x20 then we are going to pad the board with cloth padding and cut the cloth padding about two inches larger than your stretched canvass. And then fold the edge of the padding over the back of the board and I like to use a staple gun but you could use thumbtacks. I just think staple gun goes a little faster and it is a lot easier. Staple the padding over the edge of the board. Now, that you have got it all stapled around the edge of the board, trim off a little bit of this excess padding on the corners.
The next step is to attach the fabric to the stretcher board so cut the fabric out about four inches wider than your mat on all sides. Place the fabric down wrong side up and then fold the ages over the side of your stretcher bars and staple gun those in place, the same way that you did with the padding. When you do the corners, you want to cut down a little bit on the bulk and you can do that by mitering the corners. Take the corner, fold it down flat then take the sides and fold those up so that you have made a nice little square connection and staple gun those in place.
The next step is to add the ribbon across the front of the memo board. And you can either use ribbon or jumbo rickrack, either one works just as well and if you are using this size of board which is 16x20 you will need about six yards of ribbon. Measure the ribbon across the top allowing enough to wrap around to the back side. And you are probably going to put one, your first stripe across the corner on that side, another one across the corner on this side. The side where you want to put your first ribbon, hold it in place, flip the board over and then staple gun the ribbon in place. If you want to put it—pull it fairly tight.
Then we are going to repeat the same step for the rest of the ribbon. We will add four pieces of ribbon this way and then four pieces of ribbon that way. When you add the ribbon going on the opposite direction, we bent over and under the pieces that have already been attached to the board.
And the last step is to stitch together the ribbons where they intersect and you just need to take a couple of little quick stitches in there with regular sewing thread and if you want too, you can add a little button to decorate the intersection. And because my ribbon is look like little streets, I found some little buttons that look like little cars so I am just going to stitch one on each place where the ribbon is crossed. Once you have got all the buttons attached, you are ready to hang your memo board and then you can use it to hold family photographs and stamps and letters that you need to mail.
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