4th Project complete!

Hi all,


Right I've just finished the forth project in my challenge, it is a set of four free machined 'scribble' coasters made out of bubblewrap and carrier bags! I hope you like them.

‘Scribble’ coasters

Materials needed:

1. Bubble wrap with large bubbles

2. Selection of colourful carrier bags

3. Thread

4. Sewing machine

5. Iron

6. Ironing board

7. Teflon sheets or baking parchment / Baking paper

8. Felt off cuts at least 10cm sq. each

Instructions:

To make the background

1. Lay a large piece of parchment paper down onto your ironing board and lay a

piece of bubblewrap over it with the bubbles facing upwards (1st picture above).

2. Lay pieces of carrier bag and some threads / fibres in a pleasing arrangement on

top of your bubblewrap layer.

3. Cover with another piece of bubblewrap with the bubbles facing downwards, and

place another piece of parchment paper over your bubblewrap ‘sandwich’.

4. Now iron all your layers until the plastics have fused together (see picture above)

You should now have something that looks a bit like this:

The next step is to start embroidering

1. Set your machine to darning or cover / lower the feed dogs of your machine

2. Put an embroidery / darning foot on your machine and set the machine to straight

stitch and off you go. Move the fabric around whilst stitching at a steady fast pace.

3. Go around all the coloured shapes a couple of times, then if you like fill in the

gaps with different patterns, just as you would when scribbling / doodling (see the

pictures below).

  

Once you are happy with your fabric you need to cut your coasters out, what

shape is up to you. I drew around an existing coaster but you could use anything

like a roll of Sellotape for example.

We now need to go back to the ironing board and make some backing to add

some weight.

1. This is done by folding a carrier bag into quarters and ironing it between the two

pieces of parchment paper until it fuses together you will probably need one bag

for each coaster.

2. Now put your coaster wrong side up onto the bottom sheet of parchment paper

and cover with your sheet of melted plastic bag and then the other piece of

parchment paper. Iron, turn over, then repeat the ironing on the other side.

3. Cut around the coaster.

You could leave it at this stage but I wanted to finish mine with a backing, so I

appliquéd each coaster to a piece of felt with a small satin stitch and then cut really

close to the stitching to finish.

And there we have it a useful set of coasters and a lot of fun with the machine! Right off to put the kettle on - anyone else for tea?