Saturday, June 07, 2008

How to fight a grommet and win

Having made one final journal from lesson one of Sue Bleiwiess's class, tonight I moved onto lesson two which involves the insertion of ringbinders through grommets.

I bought one of those sets of grommets with tools included and had a practice on a piece of Fast2 fuse. Pound Fast2fuse with metal tube thing and hammer ( well, OK, heel of shoe, because I don't have a hammer), push neck of grommet through resultant hole, pop little ring thing on top, use tool to hold them on, pound with heel of shoe. Done. easy.
Of course when I came to put them through a journal cover that consisted of (a) two layer fabric pocket (b) fabric lining (c) Pelmet Vilene (d) sew in vilene base of top (e) overlapped applique'd strips it was not so straightforward.

For the assisitance of others in the class and the amusement of the rest of you, here is my tutorial on how to fight a grommet and win.

1. Forget the pounding out the hole thing. Start with punchng a hole with a bookmakers awl.
2. Waggle the awl around to make the hole as big as possible.
3. Punch another hole on the very edge of the existing one and repeat waggle.
4. Stick the closed blades of a small pair of embroidery scissors in the hole and waggle.
5. Open the blades a bit and waggle. Stick your tongue out if it helps.
6. Take the scissors out and snip at the hole until it is big enough to take the metal punch tube thing you were supposed to use in the first place.
7. Presumably the hole is now big enough to take the grommet. This actually not so because for some reason the grommet is bigger than the punch.
8. Mutter. Insert larger paper scissors. Waggle. Revert to sharp scissors. Snip and excise thread and bits of interfacing.
9. Push grommet through hole.
10. Take the ring thing that covers the grommet. Using the tools provided start to bang with the heel of the shoe. Ignore the instruction to tap seven to eight times. Bash the heck out of it about twenty five times.
11. Put the ring binders through the grommets. This will pull the ring back off.
12. I purchased an English brand so I now sat it down and told it that if it did not behave it was going to the Tower and it would be off with its head. Depending on where you are from you may wish to threaten it with Botany Bay or Guantanamo or whatever.
13. Repeat step 10 but with more vigour.
14. At the point when you hit your thumb do not utter any common swear word. It is neither ladylike or creative. Try 'Oh clucky, ducky, mucky, vladi- sucky- vlostok." Stamp around. take a deep breath and declare, 'I will win. I will win.'
15 Repeat step 13. I repeated step 14 as well but I'd say that was not absolutely necessary.
16. Grommet on, ringbinder in. Time for chocolate.


8 comments:

Donna said...

hope you didn't break a perfectly good heel to win :-)

Maggie said...

I am in that class as well, I think maybe I will skip straight to the chocolate!

floribunda said...

I had a stepmother from Stoke-on-Trent who used to say "oh bunnies!" instead of more down-to-earth cursing. I recommend the tried and true words... and a hammer!

~*~Pearl~*~ said...

Wow your journal look awesome! Hope is goes ok when I try to do mine..

Cheryl Gebhart said...

Oh my gosh - what a time you had! But your journal is beautiful and your account is quite funny. I'm in the class too, I think I'll use a hammer.

Lisa said...

Great looking journals Helen. Have you wound up the Quiltland Chronicle?
It all seems very quiet over there.

TracyB said...

Ok you're scaring me!! I'm in this class too & haven't got that far yet!!

Deborah Boschert said...

I've had similar fights with grommets. Since I live in Texas, I can send them straight to lethal injection. You are so right about pounding repeatedly!