36th project completed! A felted mobile phone sock

Last week's project started me thinking about the stuffing left over from the pillow. A saw no reason why the filling couldn't be used as a backing for needle-felting and with embellishing machines as a ground to work on. I have been meaning to use one of my favourite photos of my daughter when she was little in a project, so I had a play and came up with this. A felted mobile phone sock for her to keep her phone safe.


it is a reasonably quick project and one for those of you who are looking for an excuse to experiment.


Materials needed

• Stuffing from an old pillow
• A small amount of merino wool tops
• Small shell beads
• Sewing machine
• Embroidery threads
• Embellishing machine / Needle-felting needle and pad
• A small piece of lightweight water soluble stabiliser

Instructions

1. Pull out a section of stuffing and flatten out to about the size of an A4 piece of paper. using an embellishing machine or needle-felting tool and pad, felt the fibres together until you have a stable base.

Before felting                                                        After Felting

2. Lay some wool fibres on top of your base as above then using the embellishing machine or needle-felting tool, felt together the fibres until they make a stable background. Put to one side

3. Using a small piece of water soluble stabiliser, trace off your motif (in my case, my Daughter). And pin in place onto your background

4. Using straight stitch and with your feed dogs lowered carefully fill in the motif. 

5.Once finished tear away the stabiliser to leave your embroidered motif on your background.

6. Fold your 'panel' in half lengthways, checking that the position of your motif looks OK and trim to the right size for your phone plus a little for a seam on two sides. Stitch with right sides together then carefully turn the right way out.

7. You can now add some beads etc. for detail. I had some small shell beads lying around so I added those. There we have it a lovely mobile phone sock and a lot of money saved by using stuffing rather than lots of wool tops!

35th project completed - A Quilted Penguin bag

Well what do you make with an old pillow?

A quilted Penguin bag of course!

Some of you may be wondering how I come up with the ideas and the process I go through to decide what to make each week. This weeks challenge is a prime example.

The first step is to work out what the item to be recycled is actually made of. In this case the pillow was made up of some poly cotton fabric and some polyester hollow fibre filling. Quilting obviously came to mind as a way of turning the raw materials I had into something new. 

A very similar process happens every week for example; a plastic bottle is just a thin sheet of plastic. We all know that plastic melts when exposed to heat, it is easy to cut and does not fray. Equally, a tomato purée tube is really just a thin piece of metal once opened out, and can be cut and embossed easily. It is a very soft metal so it can also be sewn through with care. 

So why not take a look around the house for things to use rather than using something new?

Materials

• An old pillow - well washed of course
• 2 x A4 sized inkjet Tee-shirt transfers
• An inkjet printer
• Sewing machine
• Thread
• Scissors
• 2 x A4 sized pieces of felt
• 1.5m Wide ribbon

Instructions

1. Print out 2 x Tee-shirt transfers with a design of your choice

2. Cut open the top of your pillow, remove the filling and cut out 2 pieces from the case about A4 in size. Iron on your Tee-shirt transfers.

3. As your pillow has been washed, no doubt the filling will have bunched together a bit. Pull out a thin layer and flatten out to use as a wadding.

4. Layer up 1 x printed piece of fabric and a piece of felt with the wadding in the middle.

5. Take one 'sandwich' and using your motif as a guide, lower the feed dogs on your sewing machine and using straight stitch sew through all three layers to quilt (Quilting purists look away now!). Repeat with the second 'sandwich'.

6. Once both sides of the bag are quilted, place right sides together, pin and stitch about 1cm from the edge down each side and across the bottom. Zig-zag over the edges to protect the edges.

7. Now turn down approx 3cm to hem the top and stitch. Turn the bag right side out and set to one side.

8. To make the shoulder strap, fold your length of ribbon in half and stitch the sides together using a zig-zag stitch over the edges. You can then add a few extra rows of stitching to add strength and a decorative touch.

9. Sew the strap to the bag and there we have it a cute little bag. I am going to keep the rest of the filling to use as stuffing and other projects.

Other ideas - You could add a fringe (as I did) or tassels to the bottom of the bag or use some extra printed fabric to make the strap.