Color your fabric for this scrappy quilt, color your world!

Yesterday, I showed you how I used my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 sewing and quilting machine to sew scrappy strip sets together to create a quilt top. Now, let’s make some new fabric from scraps, using fabric markers from the Mont Marte Signature Fabric Art Set and adding decorative stitching. There are hundreds of decorative stitches on the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 and itʼs fun to play and make some small projects at the same time. Today, I’ll show you how to make a fabric greeting card, but the technique can be applied to your quilting projects.

Decorative stitch samples

I decided to try the markers to color some of my black and white fabric scraps to make new fabric. This was a piece of the border fabric I used on my strip quilt in yesterday’s QUILTsocial post. Use a light touch when coloring fabric – you can always add more color later if you want a darker shade. It’s also good to move the marker in one direction on the fabric, not back and forth. When you’ve finished coloring, leave it for 24 hours and then iron for 3 – 4 minutes to set the colors.

Fabric colored with fabric markers

In my blue scrap drawer, I found this little pieced triangle that already had some decorative stitching on it.

All the supplies for a fabric greeting card

I decided to use one of the many decorative stitches on my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 to finish the edges of the triangle. There are hundreds to choose from, but I finally chose stitch Q28, one of a group of 30 Q stitches designed especially for quilting projects.

The LCD screen shows the Q28 stitch.

This was also a good chance to use the laser light on my machine. What a great feature this is! If you’re not familiar with the laser light on the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050, have a look at this Laser Guided Sewing video.

Laser light key on the LCD screen

I cut the pieced triangle in half and placed the two pieces on my newly colored fabric. I lined up the red laser light with the edge of a triangle and started to stitch my decorative stitch along the edges. Just keep the laser light on the edge of the fabric and your stitching will be perfect!

Line up the laser light on the edge of the triangle for accurate stitching.

Using a decorative rotary cutter blade, I trimmed the fabric so it would fit on the front of a 5″ x 7″ greeting card. Then I glued my triangle-decorated fabric onto the front of the card. This was a very easy card to make, and I also got to use up some scraps and try out more decorative stitches on my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050. I’m sure I’ll be making lots more of these greeting cards!

Completed greeting card

Here are some more examples of fabric that have been re-colored with markers to make new fabric. So many possibilities here for sewing this unique fabric on my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 machine to create a special quilting project!

Fabric re–colored with fabric markers

I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow as I use fabric scraps, fabric paint sticks, and of course, my Brother Innov-ís BQ3050 machine to make new fabric for fabric bookmarks.

Fabric bookmarks

This is part 3 of 5 in this series

Go back to part 2: Putting it all together with the Brother Innov-ís BQ3050

Go to part 4: Creating one-of-a-kind fabric with paint sticks and decorative stitches

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