Harebrained

First, a little rant. It drives me nuts that people don't know how to spell anymore. And that they don't care to check their spelling. In case you were wondering, the proper spelling is harebrained, not hairbrained. 

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I've had a harebrained idea. With slightly less than 40 weeks to go before the wedding, still trying to nail down a theme (travel? birds? shabby chic? Colonial sampler?), I thought, wouldn't handkerchiefs be a sweet wedding favor? They could even use them to wave us away for the departure since we're not allowed to have confetti, or rice, or sparklers at our venue. 

Now, I know I'm probably not the first to have any of these ideas. I was thinking vintage, or at least something that felt handmade. Nothing cheap-looking or mass produced. And definitely nothing that looks remotely close to machine-embroidery. (It can go very well, but more often goes horribly, horribly wrong. And the machine I have can't do too much.)

The only thing is, after looking at prices of hankies online and at local antique shops, I found them to be a little bit out of my price range. At five to ten dollars apiece, plus shipping, that could take a big old bit out of our wedding budget. 

Three hankies I found while thrifting. Gorgeous and great for inspiration, but a bit pricey.

So then I sourced linen prices and found some amazing quality linen for an amazing price. If I make them all myself, the materials will cost less than a dollar per hanky. I even came up with my own embroidery motifs, and keep having more ideas. I like cohesion in my theme, but a little bit of variety is nice too.

There are birds in a love tree:

My first border (for a man's handkerchief)

 Birds over a heart-flower motif:

And another border for a man's hanky, this one super-subtle:

Sounds brilliant, right? Right. Just factor in the fact that it takes me an hour to make each hand-rolled hem, and another hour or two to do the embroidery, and you see how harebrained the idea is.

A stack of hemmed hankies ready for embroidery.

 Of course it's nuts. It's beyond nuts. But I think I'm past the point of no return. I've already done the math, and realized that if I make ten hankies a week, I can totally do this and get it done well before the wedding.

A stack of freshly cut fabric. Something I'll be seeing a lot of this year.

 And instead of harebrained, maybe we'll go with labor of love from now on. Even though there might not be so much difference between the two.