Recent and Festive Makes

I've been dabbling lately in a new to me craft. If you've been following my blog for any length of time, you will know that I'm always looking for new and inspiring ways to use up fabric scraps and I saw this idea on an Instagram post that happened to pop up in my feed. It was to create a bowl made from fabric scraps. I immediately thought this looked quite simple and easy to make, so I gave it a try.

The first step was to cover the bottowm of a bowl with cling film and then PVA and then stick the fabric scraps to it, coating it with more PVA.  The first layer of fabric scraps needed to be face down, as this would become the inside of the bowl. Here's a picture of the bowl at this stage:

Once this dried, which took approximately 24 hours, I could then apply a second layer.  For this layer I just used plain fabric, just to thicken the bowl and give it more strength. I used the cotton pocket bags from the jeans I'd been cutting up for this, and it worked well enough. Once this dried, it was time to apply the top layer, which would be the outside of the bowl and these fabric scraps needed to be face up.

When this was dry, I took the fabric bowl off the metal bowl and the cling film. To do this I cut away the cling film and lifted the bowl out with it, before peeling it off. For some reason, the inside layer of fabric was covered with what looked like a thin layer of plastic. I'm not sure if this came from the cling film, or was the initial PVA I used drying to a shiny finish. The later PVA I used dried matt, so I decided to add a second layer of scrap fabric to the inside of the bowl to cover this. To be honest, it was also good for making the bowl a bit thicker and stronger too, and I preferred the fabrics I used latterly too.

Once completely dry, here's a picture of the resulting bowl:

I'm going to use this to store the balls of fabric yarn I made to use for weaving. 

I enjoyed making it and I liked the results. You can, of course, use any bowl, of any size to do this and you could make it from one fabric, rather than lots of different scraps. I love the fact that it is constructed completely from fabric (and PVA).

In addition to the above make, I also started a festive sewing project recently, to make some fabric 'paper' chains. I've been meaning to do this for a few years, but have never got around to it. I have a stack of Xmas fabrics and wanted to make some kind of decor with it. Here's a picture of the stack of fabrics I chose for this make:

I mainly chose red, white and green Xmas prints. I created a template from cardboard and then proceeded to cut several pieces from each fabric, using the template.

Using just the fabric on it's own made the links of the chain a bit too flimsy, so I needed to iron interfacing onto the back of each strip to make the links a bit stronger, before I proceeded to link them. I added velcro to each link for closure, as this way they could be stored flat and not get squashed or take up too much space.

Here's a picture of what I've made of the chain so far:

I'm really happy with it. I still need to make a few more links to make it long enough to hang where I want to put it, and the velcro needs stitching as it is just pinned in place in this photo, but it's coming along nicely and I love the bright and cheerful Xmas prints. I'll post another picture when I've got it up in situ next month.

I had a couple of smallish pieces of two of the fabrics left, so I decided to use them up and make them into drawstring gift bags for wrapping gifts this Xmas. They just need some ribbon threading through at the top and they'll be good to go.

A few inexpensive things, that I enjoyed making from fabric I already had in my stash and that should be useful this festive season and beyond.