sewing Archives - Page 32 of 42

Denim coaster

At last! The final Craft Countdown post, and the final post of February. Project #10 was a denim coaster, with light wash on one side and dark on the other. I cut a 4″ square piece of each and stitched across with “jeans gold” thread at half inch intervals.

Now, I didn’t backstitch at all, I just cut the thread at the edge of the fabric. My thought was that it would fray with use and washing, giving a cut-offs look, but the quantity of stitching would ensure it would still hold together. And it did! (thus far.) Of course I pressed it before photographing it, but throwing it in the wash (unprotected by a mesh bag or similar) had exactly the effect I hoped for.

Homemade iron-on patches

Craft Countdown #9 was robot iron-ons. It was getting close to 11:30 and I was worried about running out of ideas, so I started rooting through my fabric drawers. The top one holds flannel-ish material and denim, and I pulled out a small remnant of robot fabric. I loved this fabric, but there is so little of it, the options for using it are limited. I had thought about making iron-on patches out of it, but hadn’t gotten around to it.

What I had on hand for fusible web in sheet form was Wonder Under, so that is what I used.

I cut pieces, lined them up with the pictures, and ironed them down. Of course, it being 11:30, I did two dumb things: I started ironing one on upside-down, necessitating a later cleaning of the iron, and I peeled the paper off before cutting them instead of leaving it as a protective backing. They’re still cute.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with them. I have made these before, out of other fabrics that had nice little pictures, but they languish in a drawer for the most part.

Of course, making the business card case and the memo pad holder gave me a use for some of my commercial iron-ons, so maybe these will see use in such projects as well.

Gecko memo

Inspired by Craft Countdown #3, the business card case, I made a memo pad case for #8. I was also inspired by the fact that I had a big gecko iron-on that didn’t fit on the business card case.

I had bought some memo pads before the holidays, in case any small children needed entertaining with coloring and stickers, so I made the case to fit them: about a half inch wider, and probably somewhat more than a half inch taller, times two.

The pocket is a piece of stiff white fabric with each edge folded in a half inch, and the open edge tucked under again (so it is folded down by 1/4″ twice). I stitched very close to the raw edges on the sides and bottom to keep the seam allowance fabric from scrunching when the memo pad was inserted.

The cover was a little flimsy, since it was just thin felt, so later on I decided to add a small pocket to it mostly to stiffen it up. I then had a bunch of uneven stitch lines, so I thought I needed either more stitching, or less. Since less would have been difficult, I went around with a zigzag. I like the result.