Sewing satin ribbon

This weekend I've been busy getting bits and pieces ready for the craft fair my sister and I are doing on the 12th. The majority of the items I make are small, and I really wanted some pieces that were going to attract the eye and cause some interest. So I drove over to our local fabric shop and bought some lovely spotty fabrics to go with the linen look cottons I had already purchased.

I had my own reel of white satin ribbon I'd bought long before I started to stock ribbon, and I cut 25cm pieces. I then drew a heart on some card and drew directly onto the fabric with a fabric pen. I did quickly learn the easiest way to sew a heart is to cut the fabric loosely, mostly in a square, then sew along the outline of the heart.

One thing I didn't think about though was that the satin ribbon would fray and when pulled would tear, whoops! I learned this the hard way and now have extra lavender hearts, oh well.

So...how do you stop a satin ribbon tie from fraying whilst still looking pretty?
 Many sewing machines have different settings on them. A zigzag stitch, when the heart is stuffed, will show the stitching through the edges. So I chose an elastic overlock stitch instead. This gave me the zigzag I needed to stop the ribbon from fraying, but also gave the straight stitch edge to stop the stitching showing when the heart was stuffed.

You can see the results in the picture above, cute huh?