Now that you’ve gathered all of your supplies, you can set to work prepping the paper for stitching!

That basically means cutting it to the right proportions (if you’re so inclined, you are of course allowed to skip this or any other step if it sounds too fiddly to you because you are an adult with free will and I am not the boss of your projects), rounding the corners, figuring out where you’re going to put the holes, then actually punching the holes.

I talk you through lots of the details of that in a video over here if you want to give it a try on your own (it may ask you to log in, but anyone with any sort of membership including the free one should be able to watch it). I’ll also have actual prepunched notecards going out to Notable Nonsense folks in April (the printers have worked their magic and they’re on the way to me as I type). And I’ll have a bunch of templates (to let you skip the tedious measuring and marking bits and get right to the invigorating stabbing and slicing bits) for various sizes of paper in the pattern (which should come out right when all the note cards go in the mail).

And again, I emphasize, you can absolutely positively for sure also just experiment with this on your own! I am never ever ever gonna be mad at anyone for looking at something I make, thinking ‘huh, I could do that,’ and then figuring it out on their own. We’re a creative bunch, you are all exceptionally clever, and I love the idea of us all doing our own version of things!

Just if you suddenly realize what you really want in this world is a project where someone else has done all the tedious bits ahead of time for you and all you want to do is sit back and follow the instructions, I can make that happen too. Because it’s nice to have options.

Next time we’ll talk about the stitching (and how to use your yarn efficiently and keep the back looking tidy)!