scrap fabric Archives - Spoonful of Imagination

Easy DIY Fabric Bookmarks

November 4, 2013 By Erica Deuel 5 Comments

I love a fun, easy project. With a little scrap fabric, you can sew these sweet fabric bookmarks. They are colorful, fun, and a cheap thrill.

They would make a great favor to a reading book club or at a bridal shower. My bookmarks doubled as name tags (as I painted everyone’s name on them that attended) at my Spoonful Lab. You can do the same or keep them just as bookmarks with the simplicity of the heart. I think both are great options.

Here is how I made mine. I started with little scrap pieces of fabric about 2″-3″ in height. I just folded the fabric a little and sewed a straight line down the middle to create about 5″ long strips of fabric. This made a haphazard ruffle effect that I love.

Next, I cut out a bunch of flat burlap hearts. I made sure to cut them just a little smaller than my ruffled fabric pieces.

I then pinned a heart into the middle of a ruffled fabric strip and sewed around the outer edge of the heart. Contrasting thread color looks best! You could also use another fabric instead of the burlap. I love the contrast of the dull burlap color with the pop of bright color behind it. The texture of the burlap is also very fun.

I left all the edges raw because I like the frayed look, so my bookmark was then done! With the holidays coming this idea would even be cool as a way to mark presents. There are lots of possibilities, if you just add a little imagination!

Thank you so much for checking in! I hope you all had a great weekend!

Just as a quick reminder, registration is going on for my NEXT Spoonful Lab. Read all the details and register here. Thank you so much for all your support!

**I am so sorry I am late on announcing my two winners! I used random.org to draw my winners, and Amber you won my send out love tags and Gene you won my spoonful swag! Congratulations! I will be in touch!**

DIY Fabric Bunting

May 13, 2013 By Erica Deuel 7 Comments

When I was designing Reagan’s room, I knew I wanted to have some fun pops of color throughout it. I thought fabric bunting would be a fun way to do this without costing a lot of money or creating something to dominate. I want to quickly show you how I created it, so you can do it too. I believe the way I did it might be one of the easiest sewn ways.

Materials

Fabric
Pinking Shears
Jute Rope
Thread
Sewing Machine
Ruler
Pen

I first went and got a few fabrics that I loved and were colors that I was incorporating in her room. I got 1/3 a yard of each of the fabrics. You could easily get more (depending on the area you want your bunting to wrap) or just use a bunch of different scrap fabrics you have on hand.

You then decide how big you want each of your “triangles” to be. I didn’t want mine to be too large. I decided I wanted them to be about 5″x6″. I measured my fabric and cut out a bunch of rectangles this size.

I have seen a lot of ways of creating bunting to have the fabric double-sided with a nice sewn edge. I didn’t want to spend that amount of time on this project. It would have been like making a ton of little pillows as each triangle would have been sewn inside out than flipped right side out and iron pressed to go flat. In my opinion, the difference in look is not worth the extra time spent to have something that gives the same effect. I simply used my pinking shears to cut my fabric. The pinking shears allow the raw unfinished edge to not fray as bad and created a nice added look in the mean time.

Once all my rectangles were cut, I start cutting them into triangles. I simply folded each rectangle and used a pen to mark the center of that rectangle and then cut from that point to one of the opposite corners. As I went on, I even stopped measuring for the center but just eye-balled it. It doesn’t have to be perfect. No one will be able to tell if you are a few centimeters off.

One tip to consider when cutting your triangles: Take a minute to think about which way the “fat” end of your triangle would look best (depending on the print of your fabric). In the triangle cut above, I would have cut right across the pretty green flower if I have cut my triangle from the other end.

After all your fabric is cut, you are ready to sew your bunting together! I sewed my triangles onto a thick jute rope because I wanted a more rustic look. You could sew yours onto ribbon, yarn, or just about anything!

If you decide to use jute rope as well, make sure your fabric hangs over the rope edge just a little as you sew. The rope will want to roll and you don’t want to create “holes” in between where your rope and triangle meet (as shown below).

Another tip is to pull your rope tight as you sew, so it does not turn around.

I knew I was going to wrap my bunting around clear outdoor lights to hang in my daughter’s room, so I left a bigger gap in between my triangles (for room to wrap around the bulb-ed wire and hide it a little bit). It depends on the look you are wanting to create how far apart you space your triangles as you sew them onto your rope/ribbon.

Once you have sewn all your triangles, you are done! It is easy to go back and add more on, if your bunting ends up to be shorter than you would like. My bunting was a little short and didn’t cover the electrical cord like I wanted, so I just made another small strip and sewed it on.

The final step is to hang up your bunting and enjoy it! I love the simple yet fun look it creates!

For more pictures of Reagan’s room, please go visit her Minnie Mouse Bedroom Reveal! Thanks so much for stopping by, and I hope I just gave you a quick DIY that you want to do!

DIY Burlap Hair Bow

January 30, 2013 By Erica Deuel 11 Comments

Do you have a baby shower or girl’s birthday coming up and you’d love to show up with a really special and unique gift?

My friend Erin and I are throwing a small craft/girls night/baby shower for one of our mutual friends next Tuesday night, and it has me making hair bows for the first time in what feels like forever. I am loving it. Hair bows can be such a quick craft that make a wonderful gift for babies and really girls of all ages. (including trendy mamas of course!)

The burlap trend is big right now and one of my personal favorites. Today I’m going to walk you through some DIY burlap hair bows.

I love how even after you “master” making one style, you can do small changes to make several of those hair bows all different from one another. For example, these burlap hair bows are all made with the same method, but the finishing elements gives each one a different look.

Materials:

Burlap (cut into strips about 1″ wide)
Craft feathers
Buttons, beads, parts of old necklaces
scrap fabric pieces like chiffon and tulle
felt (cut into about a 2.5″ across square
Hot glue gun with glue sticks

The felt squares will help save your fingers from being burned by the hot glue as it acts as like a canvas to hold your hair bow.

You begin with one felt square and a piece of burlap. Add a little hot glue to the outside edge of your circle and stick the end of one of your burlap strips on it and press it tight together. Give it a few second to “set”. Depending on how far down you start gluing your burlap on your felt square and how wide your burlap and felts circles are, will determine the actual finished size of your hair bow. Mine are all a little over 3″ across.

Next, add a little glue on top of your burlap in about the same spot you glued the burlap to the felt.

Fold your burlap slightly over and press it for a few seconds into that hot glue glob so it “sets”. This will step will start to create a slightly ruffled look.

Once it has “set, you add another glob of glue on the end of that ruffle.

Slightly fold over your burlap strip again and “press” it for a few second to “set.”

You keep doing this step all around your piece of felt. There is no need to fully make sure each “fold over” is glued more than to just the top of the fold in line in front of it. The ridges in the burlap allow the hot glue to seep through and some of it catches onto the bottom felt. That is good enough for now. I will show you when to add more glue to make sure the burlap ruffles are tightly attached to the felt circle in a minute.

Once you are back at the beginning of your felt circle, you cut off the extra burlap.

You now have the rough base of your hair bow.

I like to add feathers here to start the embellishing fun stuff. Lift up the edge of your burlap. There should be a flap of felt left open to attach your embellishments. Add a glob of glue on the felt and stick a feather (or a few) into the glue.

Press it for several seconds. At this point, you might realize that during this “pressing” part of hot gluing the burlap, you fingers can get burned. ouch. I’ve been doing this for years and have just kinda gotten used to it. Silly, I know! You could certainly find some good gloves at Home Depot to avoid the burns.

Now, after the feathers had set, I went back and added more glue under the edge of my burlap ruffles onto the felt to make sure they were good and sealed on the felt. I don’t want my hair bow to fall apart, so I am OCD with my glue.

I wanted to add more texture and depth to my hair bow, so I actually cut one of my 1″ strips in half and did the same ruffle steps on top of my current burlap ruffles to add another layer of ruffles for this hair bow. On the other hair bows (in the top picture), I also did this step with the 1″ burlap strips. It is up to you if you add this extra layer or and you can choose how wide you would like them to be. The important part is to just make sure you glue the initial edge of burlap onto the center of your hair bow.

I then hot glued an alligator clip onto the back of my hair bow (that I had covered with ribbon). This gives the clip a strong bond to the bow while staying in your hair or attach to a headband.

Since my burlap hair bow is thick with hot glue, I opted to glue my button into the center on the top (rather than try to sew it through all those layers of hot glue). And with that, the burlap hair bow is done!

I am giving this one to my friend at her baby shower. I can never make just one though. So, now I have a bunch ready for my next sale.

If you follow me on instagram or twitter, you get quick previews of things I am working on during the week. You may have seen some of the other types of hair bows I made this week on those two sites.

Wanna see some suggestions for variations on your bows? I did slight changes to each one to make the hair bow look unique and kept me feeling creative rather than like a machine making the same thing over and over.

I can not promise that injury to your fingers will not happen when using a hot glue gun for this long. (Again, gloves. It’s not like they hand out badges for being a tough crafter!)

My fingers are a little sore today. What we do to get our crafting on! I love it. (but seriously, gloves.)

When I make this many hair bows at once, I have a little pile of small ribbon, fabric, buttons, scrap-book embellishments, and other odds and ends next to me. I simply start playing and adding something here and there. Usually adding one element (like a shiny black button) will make that hair bow seem fancier, so I add other things to keep it fancy (like black feathers). If I add a duller wood type bead, that hair bow takes on a more vintage, rustic persona and I keep to that feel by adding duller ribbon and funnier feathers (like burnt orange) as well.

My little girl has not been feeling well this week, so this is the best model shot I could get out of her. You can see the hair bow size and how we like to wear it on the side.

I absolutely love how each hair bow can be different, if we just add a little imagination to the base format. I hope you will feel like hair bows can be simple and that you can make one now and use some of that scrap burlap from your other projects.

Thank you so much for stopping by! Let’s get the link party started! Have you made a kid related craft this week too? I would love to check out your All About the Kids post. Please link them up!

Link up at Mod Vintage Life

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