Magnetic Memo Board

Hey! Karline here. Niamh's off having entirely too much fun, so I've got a nifty project for you this week: a memo board! She's shown you how to make a fabric-covered bulletin board and one of those ribbon-board-photo-holder things ... but there's another way to hold those miscellaneous notes and mementos, and its charm is positively magnetic!

All set? Awesome. First, let's fancy up our fabric!

Get out your trusty air-erase pen (thank you, whoever invented these things) and for reference, mark out a rectangle the size of your finished board in the center of the fabric - in my case, 16"x20".

Mark the center point and crosshairs for your embroidery (if you have embroidery software and can print a full-size template of the design, that helps).

Also mark a horizontal line across the bottom of the rectangle where your patchwork will go (mine is 4" from the edge of the rectangle).

If you're using an applique design (try it! it'll look sweet with the patchwork), cut out your applique pieces.

(Need a raw edge applique refresher? Here you go.)

Time for embroidery! Cut a piece of cutaway stabilizer a bit bigger than the hoop you'll be using. Spray one side with a bit of temporary spray adhesive, and smooth it onto the back of the fabric's area to be embroidered. Load the design into your machine, hoop up the fabric and stabilizer ...

...and stitch your design.

Trim the stabilizer from the back of the design.

A word about stabilizer: I was worried about the cut edge of the stabilizer showing through my fabric, so I used my favorite embroidery supply of all time: sheer cutaway stabilizer. Floriani No Show Mesh and Sulky Soft 'n' Sheer are a couple of popular ones. It's a great, more stable alternative to tearaway stabilizer when regular old medium-weight cutaway is a bit much. It's best used with designs not much heavier-stitching than this one. Check the stuff out -- you'll love it.

Now let's get patchy. Cut pieces of fabric for the bottom patchwork border. They should be varying widths, but all 1" taller than the bottom border you marked out on your fabric in the beginning.

How many patches do you need? Line 'em up, overlapping by 1/2", until they'll span the width of your board.

Stitch together two patches, right sides together. Repeat until they're all stitched together in a row. Press the seams to one side.

Using your nifty air-erase pen, draw a line 1/2" from the long edge of the patchwork border. Pin the patchwork border to the main fabric, right sides together, matching up the lines -- with the patchwork *above* the line. After you stitch the line, you'll want to be able to flip it down to make the bottom patchwork border.

Stitch the line (didn't see that one coming, did ya?).

Flip the patchwork border down so the pretty side shows, and press. Use a bit of temporary spray adhesive to stick the wrong side of the patchwork to the main fabric. Baste along the very bottom to hold the patchwork in place.

This is what the main fabric will look like when you're done.

Spray the wrong side of the main fabric piece with temporary spray adhesive.

Smooth the fabric onto your magnetic surface, using the rectangle you marked earlier as a guide to line it up. (It really helps to have a friend for this part, though you could probably do it yourself in a pinch.)

Wrap the edges of the fabric around to the back of the board, and stick them in place neatly, using a bit more spray adhesive where necessary.

Lay the memo board into the picture frame. If your magnetic surface is pretty thin, you may be able to just put in the picture frame backing as intended and call it done. If, however, you used something thicker like a memo board, that probably won't work. So here's my workaround...

Lay the picture frame backing over the back of the board. Mine is about flush with the frame. Cut four strips of sturdy cardboard (the stuff from the back of a notebook works great) and staple one over each corner, using a staple gun.

Flip the board over and admire!

It'll look awesome in your kitchen or home office, holding notes and mementos. Now all you need are...

Magnets! There are a bajillion crafty ways you can dress those up, but I kinda dig the rough/industrial look of these round ones from the hardware store, all by themselves. (They're extra-strong, so they stick well through the fabric too.)

And yes, you've seen that photo before. We're sappy like that.

Just be careful who you show your sweet new memo board to ... they'll probably want one of their own!