10th project announcement

Well here we are number 10 already! 


I have been having yet another tidy up in the studio and have found a bag containing some small pieces of fabric and some old carrier bags. I was thinking that I should just get rid of them as they are really too small to do anything with, but the colours are so bright and fun that I can't just throw them away. So instead I will try to use them for this weeks challenge. Killing two birds with one stone as it were!
Here is a picture of the bits and pieces:

Carrier bags and scraps of fabric

8th Project announcement.

Large plastic Dog food bags

As most of you will know from previous posts, we now have 2 dogs in the house and boy can they eat! Molly is still on puppy food, whereas Poppy (If given the chance) will eat absolutely anything. The result is that we regularly have very large dog food bags going into the rubbish. 

They used to be made of paper but over the last year or so the food has been coming in very thick plastic bags instead.These are lovely strong bags and I use them for all sorts of things such as holding manure from the horses, taking garden rubbish to the dump etc. I even used them as grow bags last year, but I can't help thinking that there must be something else I can do with them.

There are lots of instructions available on the internet for tote bags made by cutting off the top and adding handles but as usual I want to take things a step further. So I will be having a play with these this week and see what I can come up with.

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?

4th Project Announcement

I can't believe it is Sunday evening already, where has the day gone? The men of the house are busy watching Top Gear and dreaming of cars they will probably never own, and my daughter is busy fretting over which courses to choose for her GCSE's so I have grabbed a little quiet time to let you all know which articles of 'rubbish' I am planning to use for the 4th project in the challenge.


So here we are da-dah!

Plastic  bags and bubble wrap! 

We always have a lot of bags as I always seem to forget mine when I go shopping ( I know, slap my wrist ) and we had a few deliveries this week which were wrapped in bubblewrap, neither of these can easily be recycled so I have picked these to have a play with.

Wish me luck!