Bee Potholders 2 - How a project progresses

Trial and error - that's how it works, especially when you're either working with no pattern or creating your own. The potholders continue. I consulted the drawing and used a water soluble pen to draw antennae, eyes, and legs for my big bee. I tried a couple different decorative stitches on the Bernina and came up with one that suited the design, stitching the legs per the picture. I created half circles on top of the black piece of the bee to serve as eyes. And then, I did the satin stitch around the whole body.

Looking at the picture above, it looks eh. the legs are not the same length and seem to have a cattywampus placement. That alone wouldn't be a problem, but the antennae aren't quite right either. Check it out in comparison of the drawing.

I didn't stitch the wings on, but did want to see how they looked, so placed them on, trimmed them down to fit so the legs would show, and then stood back and reminded myself this was my prototype and that I get to keep this one. Argh. Sometimes things don't go perfectly the first time! The position of the legs looks even worse with the wings, but there you go. This is how a project progresses. For the next three bees, I'll follow the drawing a little closer when drawing the legs and antennae. I hope that I won't have to cut down the wings any more than just a smidgen; they should be bigger than shown on the piece above.

I'm laughing as I type this because it is really kind of funny the first time you try something and it turns out a little wonky. I'm sharing it with you to show you that you will make "mistakes" along the way and you need to not let them bother you. It's never a waste; it's always a lesson. And I'll end up with a pretty groovy potholder to use in my kitchen. What I won't do with this one is use the bee fabric for binding since I know for sure I'm keeping it. I'll use black bias binding, which will work just as fine. For an item I want to sell, I prefer to use handmade bias binding that matches the design a little better.

Hopefully, the next post will show you the one above completed and one that is a little more like the drawing. I do love the colors and like the choice of bee fabric for wings.

Bee Potholders 1 - How a project happens

I'm back home and after some family health issues, have decided it's time to sew, and that means it is time to post.
People often ask me - "How do you come up with stuff?" Honestly, there is no rhyme or reason to it, but hey, here's a shot at explaining it. What I'm not going to do is go over every instruction for these potholders. You can see the general "how to" for potholders here. I've made them many times and the process is the same.

For many holidays and birthdays, when my younger son was asked what he wanted as a gift, he would respond, "a jar of bees." One birthday recently, I decided to do just that and made him a jar of bees pillow.

I  have leftover bee fabric and it has been speaking to me. So I went looking for bee pictures and found this one:

 

Now I have bee fabric and a drawing of a bee. Hmm, what to do? Potholders! I traced the basic bee parts from the drawing onto Wonder Under and cut the body of the bee out of a golden bandanna and the top and head out of black, but couldn't decide what to do with the wings. I fused the body to an 8" potholder blank that I cut out of recycled denim. Then I used a tight zig-zag/satin stitch on my machine to make the stripes on the bottom of the bee.

It looks kind of plain, but there's a lot of work to be done. I decided right about at this point to use the bee fabric for the wings and then use a satin stitch to give the illusion of veins per the drawing.

I have not yet stitched the wings down as I want to do them last. I'm still thinking on it, but I think my next step is to draw the legs, eyes, and antennae with a water soluble pen or pencil and get them stitched onto the denim. I'll use a water soluble backing when I do the embroidery (I do not have an embroidery machine, so will be creative with the Bernina I do have) for stability. The back of the potholders will be the bee fabric. I don't have enough of it to do the binding, so am thinking of doing a striped length of fabric with the black and bee fabric and cut my bias binding from that.

As projects go, this one is fairly easy. It will be time consuming because of the legs on the bee and the fact that I'm making four of them, but I need a machine project that will take some time. I'm not sure if I will sell these or keep them, but there you go. I looked at a pillow made from interesting fabric and decided it was time to use the remnant. I gathered other fabrics, including the junk jeans, that I already had, hit the internet for a drawing to use for my Wonder Under pattern, and there you go. You could do something like this on jeans or anything you wanted.

Start with something in your stash that speaks to you and just do it. More to come as the design progresses. Hope you have fun with your sewing!

Custom Fabric Covered Light Switch Plate Covers/Plates

I decided a while back to make some light switch covers. Then as I got further into them, it seemed like a good thing to share with others. This is my first set:

It was not my best work, but I got the process down after a few more. Here are some other examples of covers I made:

Regardless of the size of the cover or the shape of the switch itself, you can cover it with fabric using ModPodge or a water/glue mixture and a little imagination. I used an Exacto knife, but you can use scissors or whatever you have for cutting. The basic back instructions look like this:

Want to make some of your own? Comprehensive step-by-step, photographed instructions can be found here. (Updated March 24, 2013.) Now go gather up some small pieces of fabric, some new or old light switch covers, and get started. Way easy.

A couple of notes:

• I painted the screws for each cover to match the fabric. I picked up just a basic set of paints, stuck the screws in a Styrofoam ball to hold them steady, and then painted the heads.
• For light switches with the round fader, cut a circle a little bit larger than the circle itself and turn the fabric under on the back, using the same glue/ModPodge process.
• You do need to let these dry for a day or so before using them.
• They're great for selling on line or at craft shows too using trendy fabrics, holiday fabrics, hand dyed fabrics - the list is endless.

I'm sure there are other ways to do these, but it's the best way I could figure out and now you've got the instructions too.

The Denim Pillows in Pictures

Here are the three pillows together. The single log cabin pillow was supposed to be round. Oh well, sometimes things don't work out perfectly, right? My daughter thinks the light/dark triangle pillow looks like birds flying. I told her there was a Flying Geese pattern that was similar, but this one was not the same. The four log cabin pillow is paned with a piece of denim to allow for the seam allowance. There are no photos of the back, but the backs were made of 6" wide random denim with reinforced seams. Fun stuff.

I mailed these off to Linda and Grace and they'll be receiving them soon. If you do make pillows like this, remember to put them in a pillowcase when you wash and dry them, then fluff them up when they're dry. I used stuffing rather than pillow forms; I've never worked with pillow forms. I reinforced all seams I could because recycled denim tends to fray. You can use any design you like. If you use tiny pieces, though, you may struggle with thick seams.

Stop me before I make more potholders!

Surprise! I made more potholders. This time, they're very Smurfy. Eeeep! I again used recycled denim and this time did machine appliques of musical Smurfs backed with a Smurf mushroom house. The binding is bias tape made from the Smurf fabric too. These were essentially free since I had all the parts already. Truly frugal. And cute too!

Potholder crazy!

This is the potholder project which you can use, but what about me? I'm almost done with a set of Smurfs potholders. They're adorable too! Same method - Wonder Under, cut out the designs, fuse, satin stitch, use a batting sandwich that it heat resistant, and sew, sew, sew. I suspect I'm going to be hopeless with the small projects. I picked up a pattern for little girls with a smock type top that I adore. That's next after the Smurfs are done.

Acorn Potholders - Easy to make! Frugal too.

Here's a short tutorial for potholders made with recycled denim and some vintage 70s fabrics I have. I need to add a photo of the completed two that I made, but you get the idea just with this example.
Stop by again for other tutorials as we either get old ones posted or create new ones for you!

Decorated dish/hand towels

This is a project that I did several years ago when I ran SewingWeb.com (sadly, the site is no longer with us). I used new dish towels, added colorful fish, and created hand towels for my downstairs washroom. I've used this process in a variety of projects and you can too. Great for a gift or just a pick-me-up for a boring towel rack.
Click on the link above for instructions on how to make your own machine zig-zag appliqued dish towels!