37th Project completed - A metal work pendant

Hello again!


Wow this week has past quickly, last time I looked it was Sunday evening and now it is Saturday already. As you will know from the previous post, I decided to play about with an old metal paste tube. 


I knew that as the metal was nice and soft it could be easily embroidered on a machine but I must admit to never having tried it myself. I have discovered that I love it. It was so much fun to do! So here it is a metal work pendant made from a purée tube! 

Materials needed

• Empty purée tube
• Small scrap of felt
• Sewing machine
• Thread
• Ball point pen
• Multi purpose glue
• Spoon

Instructions

1. Open out your empty purée tube by cutting off the top and bottom then cutting up one side. Clean thoroughly and place onto a folded towel, iron out any wrinkles with the back of a spoon. Mark out a rough design with a ball point pen.

2. Cut a small piece of the tube to the desired size of your pendant and back with a piece of felt, then with your feed dogs lowered and an embroidery foot fitted to your machine start stitching in random small circles. I used 3 colours of thread separately: yellow, orange, red and merged them together.

3. Returning to the towel, working from the rear colour in the motifs with the ball point pen to emboss the design. Then trim.

4. Cut another piece of felt to cover the back of your work and glue into place with the multi-purpose glue. Trim into the finished shape once the glue has completely dried.

5. Securely stitch a jump ring to the top of your pendant, it is now ready to be threaded onto a piece of cord or a chain ready for wearing.

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. 

30th project completed - a pair of simple flower earrings

Good evening all,


I think you will like this project, it is so simple yet very 'cool'. this week I have made a pair of cute flower earrings from the leaflets, some craft foam and some earring backs I had in my jewellery making kit!


Modelled here by my beautiful daughter!

Materials needed

• Coloured junk mail leaflets
• Hole punch
• PVA Glue
• Multi use adhesive such as UHU
• Earring backs
• Scrap of craft foam
• Pair of very sharp small scissors

Instructions

1. Using the hole punch cut some tiny circles out from coloured areas of your leaflets

2. Glue them onto your scrap of craft foam using PVA glue to make small flower shapes and leave to dry

3. Once dry, cover with a thick layer of PVA glue to protect them and leave them to dry completely.

4. Once dry, cut out your shapes and glue on an earring back with the multi use adhesive. There we have it some cute flower earrings.

14th project completed! A small Easter basket

Well I promised something with and Easter theme this week, and here it is. A small easter basket, ideal for giving as a gift, full of mini eggs!

Materials used:

• Scraps of thread etc. left over from previous projects
• A couple of scraps of left over heavy water soluble embroidery stabiliser approx. 7" square.
• Thread
• Sewing machine
• Warm water
• Gold netting
• Mini eggs
• Small drinking glass
• Cling film

Instructions

1. Randomly lay your scraps of thread on top of one layer of water soluble stabiliser. Now add a top layer of stabliser and pin to secure.

2. Stitch vertical lines across your fabric about 1/4" apart then turn your fabric 90 degrees and stitch lines again.

3. Once the fabric has been completely covered in the stitched grid, place in a bowl of warm water and agitate carefully to remove most of the stabiliser. You need to leave a little to help with the moulding in the next step.

4. Cover a small rounded drinking glass or similar in cling film. Turn it upside down, then carefully mould your fabric around it as shown in the picture above.


5. Leave to dry.


6. Once dry remove from the mould and carefully trim any loose ends etc.. I did not tidy my edges too much as I liked the as they were. You can of course, neaten up the edges as you please.


7. Place a small amount of gold netting or tissue paper in the bottom of the basket and fill with chocolate mini eggs, making sure that you try a few to make sure they are OK!

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?