diy handkerchiefs :: sewing for weddings

My beautiful SIL got married this past weekend and had a wonderful DIY wedding. My contribution to the wedding was handmade handkerchiefs for the ceremony.

I got the idea from Pinterest, of course, to have vintage handkerchiefs for guests to grab on their way into the ceremony. I couldn’t find any, that weren’t ridiculously priced on websites like Etsy, so I decided to make them. The construction is simple: cut a square, fold 1/2 inch on all four sides, iron, fold another 1/2 inch on all four sides, sew straight lines with a 1/4 inch seam.

I tried to find vintage fabric on the cheap for this but couldn’t find enough so I ended up picking up two of the wedding colours in heritage cotton from Fabricland on sale. I got 3 meters of a pale yellow and 2 meters of a coral rose colour, two of the four colours that were found at the wedding.

Because I waited for long, due to being so busy, I actually finished the 75 I made two days before the wedding. I had originally planned to make 100 but didn’t have enough time. K helped me by making the template for me to use, along with helping mark and cut the fabric. I couldn’t have done it without him; he even ironed the hems for me while I was at work two days in a row!

Mikey tried to help, but ended up being in the way; he got kicked out of the sewing sweatshop a few times for trying to eat my sewing pins. haha.

The sewing was definitely the easier part of this project since it’s just a few straight lines, whereas the prep took quite a while. I bought an Ezy-Hem ruler though which made the ironing slightly easier. I ran out of sewing pins so we actually started using paper clips! Office supplies to the rescue

They ended up being 7×7 inches, because we miscalculated and made the template 9×9 inches, but they still worked out. I put them in one of my small wooden trunks that I used for photo prints at craft fairs and we set it on a chair at the entrance to the church.