Welcome to 12 Months of Starbuck’s Christmas ornaments, April addition. This is not really an ornament, but it fits in with our theme and, don’t worry, you will not be cheated out of all twelve ornaments.
Most, if not all, projects need an inspiration point and this one is no different. I was considering doing a coffee sack runner with genuine coffee sacks purchased from Costa Rica (or maybe Brazil?). When I discovered this on our local Starbucks’ wall.
Que a choir singing, bright lights… Time to make my own stencil!
I decided to put the name on both ends of the runner and run the stripe down the middle. Above: Taping off the striped section. The middle one is 3/4″, the side stripes are 5/8″ with 1/2″ space in between. (I used washi tape, ’cause my painters tape was at the store.)
I used an espresso brown paint and mixed a bright red with it to get the muted center color.
The stencil was made using freezer paper. I printed the words out straight across in Word, then taped them in a semicircle before cutting them out. I tried to get WordArt to curve them for me, but it just wasn’t working. To get a little bit of a “curve” around the letters in the stripe, I just trimmed the tape without being fussy at all.
Note: I did the stripes partially to the ends, stopped and did the main “logo” stencil, then went back and finished the stripes. My suggestion would be to do the main logos first, then add the stripes at one time.
I really, really wanted something for the ends, but knew ruffled burlap doesn’t really work the best–then it hit me to do muslin strips. To keep the theme going, I coffee dyed them (although, I must admit, it’s hard to tell. I need to get an un-dyed piece of muslin and hold of next to them as a “before.” The strips were ripped into 1″ widths and 16″ lengths. I folded, layered and did some finger gathering when I sewed them onto the end, without worrying if all of the ends were exactly even. There are 36 strips to 18 inches of width.
Explaining it all makes it sound like an awful lot of work–but just taking a step or two at a time, it didn’t seem like a big deal at all. 
I couldn’t be more delighted with it! What do you think? Did I “pull off” my inspiration piece?
