Sewing Business Blog » craft tutorial

Need New Toys For Your Customer Waiting Area?

Sarah J. Doyle — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 09:14:59 +0000

Actually, this post could be “Need new toys for your grandchildren when they come to visit?” or “Need a new product to sell at the next craft fair?”, but sometimes it seems like the toy corner of a customer waiting area gets pretty skimpy! Not many toys, and the ones you have available are over used and starting to come apart. Well, here’s new idea for toys.

I ran across a tutorial at AVeryRedKitchen.blogspot for making alphabet beanbags out of old t-shirts. Check out this picture:

Katie has done a wonderful job of putting together a tutorial for these alphabet bean bags. She has capital letters on one side and lower case letters on the other side.

After making a set of these bean bags, you can put a small basket in one corner and let the kids play! I have tons of old t-shirts that have been “begging” to be recycled into something useful! Looks like I can use the bodies of the t’s for a project and the sleeves for the alphabet bean bags. Thanks a million, Katie for this great tutorial!

For additional ideas of projects to make for yourself, your customer waiting area, or for the next craft fair, visit PatternsThatFitYou for some free ideas, and Patterns2Go for tons of crafty ideas for men, women, children, neighbors, relatives — anybody you’d want to make something for!

Watch Pin Cushion

Sarah J. Doyle — Sun, 17 May 2009 15:46:00 +0000

Amy Adams at LucyKate Crafts blog always has some of the cutest handmade goodies, and sometimes I wonder how she comes up with so many neat ideas!

Her current tutorial, posted on May 9 is a watch pincushion. As I was looking at the pin cushion and the tutorial, my own “Ah ha” moment happened — the lightbulb lit up in my head! Check out the pincushion, and what else do you see in it????

I see a child’s wrist watch —- PERFECT for my 3 1/2 year old quadruplet grandbabies and their 4 1/2 year old big brother!! And even better, the background (brown shown here) can be made with their favorite colors — purple for Sienna, orange for Sarah, Blue for Brandon, red for Zachary and big brother Jacob loves green!!!

Amy, you have just hit a jackpot here!!! And all other little children who love watches will be thanking you too!

How To Make 3-D Pompom Poodle Pictures

Sarah J. Doyle — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 15:57:00 +0000

Fido and Fifi are two of the most engaging personalities you will hope to meet as they smirk at you from their frames. These poodle pictures are especially nice for childrens’ or teen rooms. Each poodle is made using six yarn pompoms.

To make Fido, cut a piece of cardboard 2″ x 6 1/2″; wind with 2-ply yarn. If heavier yarn is used, fewer turns around the card will be needed for each pompom. Wrap the yarn lengthwise around the card.

Wind the yarn around the card 12 times and cut. Slip the yarn off the card and tie tightly in the center with a short length of yarn. Clip the loops at both ends. Comb out the strands until the ends fuzz. Hold the pompom tightly at the center so whole strands will not be pulled out during combing. Make 3 more pompoms. Two should be of a light color yarn for the top whiskers – we used tan; the other two a contrasting color such as black or dark brown for the ears. Tie the two dark ones together at the center and the two light ones together at the center.

Make two more pompoms, winding the yarn around the card 20 times. These pompoms are for the topknot and chin whiskers.

Choose a picture frame to suit your fancy. We prefer a narrow frame about 9 x 12 inch size, but this is optional. Remove the glass and cover the cardboard with burlap or other desired cloth in a color you prefer.

Cut the face pieces from felt. Cut eyes from white felt, pupils and nose black, and tongue red.

Now you are ready to begin assembling the pompom picture.

Glue the face in place and glue on the eyes. Arrange the ear pompoms and lay on the topknot. Fasten by tacking with thread or glueing to the background. Next arrange the chin and top whiskers. Fasten in place. Glue the tongue in place spreading the glue only along the top edge and tucking the tongue under the upper whiskers. The top of the tongue should be free. Glue the nose in place.

Fifi is assembled in the same manner. The arrangement of her topknot and ears is a bit different. Her bangs are trimmed straight across so they are about on the same level as her ears. She was made entirely of white yarn and wears a bright ribbon bow in her hair.

The pups can be made in other sizes by varying the length of the card around which the yarn is wound. They are cute, too, if they are both placed in the same frame and the pupils of the eyes are arranged so they seem to be “making eyes” at each other.

Have You Ever Made Shrinky Dinks???

Sarah J. Doyle — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 18:00:00 +0000

I have not seen shrinky dinks for years, and now I found out how to make them from scratch — from #6 recycleable plastic (the kind that restaurant take home food containers are), or sheets of purchased plastic.

Materials needed:

Clean Plastic, permanent markers, scissors, aluminum foil and oven mitts. How easy can it get??

Wouldn’t this be an awesome project for the kids on New Years’ Day while the men (and some ladies as well) watch all the football games!

Chrisjob, on his blog, gives complete instructions on how to draw, color, cut and bake the shrinky dinks. There are unlimited designs that can be made — simply draw your own design, or copy something from a coloring book — whatever suits your fancy!

Here’s another example of what you can make doing the shrinky dinks.

As usual, we thank you for the time spent in preparing your tutorial!

Clothesline Hot Plate Mat Set

Sarah J. Doyle — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 16:40:00 +0000

An attractive set of hot plate mats can be easily made with ordinary clothes line that is finished with a fringed edge. Clothesline is treated heavily with sizing and is subject to much shrinkage. Soak it well in hot water to relieve all foreign matter and to prevent any shrinkage after the mats are made.

Use a strong thread, such as buttonhole-twist to sew the clothes line together. Keep all the stitches on the wrong side of the mat. The clothes line is composed of several strands of fiber woven together. The needle will easily pass from one strand through another, making an evenly beautiful finished work.

For the round mat, fray out about 3/4″ of the clothes line. Begin to coil the rope tightly, holding the frayed end to the wrong side. Sew each succeeding coil of rope firmly to the preceeding row. When the mat is the desired size, cut the rope and fray out the end. Fishish off like a jelly-roll, twisting the frayed end to the wrong side, and sewing it firmly in place.

For the oblong mat, follow the same method, but instead of starting with a coil of rope, start with a length of rope, and keep working around it, making the oval effect.

Fringe edge in crochet — crochet a chain the desired length. It is good to leave a length of thread, in case you would need a little extra after sewing. Fasten the thread in the first chain made. * Chain 40, slip stitch in each of 2 next chains, repeat from * to the end.

These look great as the instructions recommend; however I’m not a crochet person, so I simply made the round and oval mats without the edging, and they looked just fine. I also made a set that I used purchased finge and attached it to the mats with the buttonhole twist thread and those looked very nice as well. Give them a try – I think you’ll like them!

How To Make Creative Hair Barrettes

Sarah J. Doyle — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:44:00 +0000

Now that we’re heading into the Christmas Season, we might just be bringing you some great ideas to make for friends, relatives, and others for Christmas. Today’s topic is creative hair barrettes. The first barrettes are made out of scrap fabric (you could make some to match the little girl’s dresses that you may be working on). Flower barrettes are very simple to make.

Cut a strip of scrap fabric 1 1/4″ wide and 8″ long for each barrette. Cut the long straight line with pinking shears, and the other side, also with pinking shears, but make a scallop design as shown above.

Sew a gathering stitch along the straight edge, and gather the strip to make a flower shape.

Tie the gathering thread into a knot after making the strip into the flower shape in order to secure the shape. Make a small round “center” for the flower about the size of a dime, also using the pinking shears to cut. Attach the flower center to the inside of the flower with several small french knot stitches using black thread.

Finally, using a glue gun, attach the flower to the back of plain metal barrettes that you get at any craft shop. These are so quick and easy to make that you can easily make and package several dozen to put on a wall in your customer area to sell throughout the Christmas season. Ours are yellow and smiley face colors, but little barrettes made in Christmas colors and designs could be a good sales item!.

Another cute little hair barrette style that we found at the AngryChicken blog could be made up to sell in packages of two or four, wrapped up to put in stockings, or just packaged up to give away to those good customers who have little girls just like the flower barrettes.

this house is way into barrettes.

I had this bag of plain metal barrettes from the craft store lying around and I always meant to cover them in a clever way and never got around to it. There are a ton in this bag. I’m not sure how many, but they are easy to find in bulk in the beading section in craft shops. I didn’t research any tutorials on making these, but I bet they are out there. Here’s how I made them:

1. I traced the outline of the barrette onto (wool) felt with my trusty water-soluble pen. I use wool felt because the other stuff freaks me out and these colors are to die for.

2. Then, I cut a second piece of felt out the same size as the first and laid it behind the top piece, trimming it a bit shorter in the length. I flipped both pieces over and sewed right on the drawn outline I made with the pen (the second shorter piece of felt will be on the bottom, so you won’t see it while you sew.) What you are making here is a barrette sleeping bag. I used brown stitching on the bottom so you can see it for clarity, but on the top, make sure the thread matches the felt, it’s much more forgiving that way.

3. I trimmed very close to the stitching with really sharp scissors. I tried pinking sheers too, and it was nice, but made the overall shape bigger than I wanted. I have seen edges done with baby scallops, and they are way cute, so that would be fun to try, too. I slid the barrette into its sleeping bag to make it all cozy and sprayed off any blue line left with water.

4. You probably don’t have to do this, but I sewed a little button/felt shape, like a flower of a heart, on top through felt and then the bars of the barrette, so it will still open, but the sleeping bag won’t slide off. The girls love these so much because they are “clothes” for barrettes, which means the felt gets taken off and lost. To discourage this, the sewn on embellishment/button keeps it altogether. They still try to undress them, however.

They are quite popular around here. Like so many things, it seems easier to make several of these barrettes, assembly-line style, than one at a time.

There you go —- spend a couple of hours making up a ton of them to give away or wrap up to put in as stocking stuffers!

3-D Portrait Tutorial

Sarah J. Doyle — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 17:05:00 +0000

I’ve found a very interesting “pretty portrait” tutorial done in 3-D that I just love. It’s from LucyKate Crafts blog (we did an interview on her in a previous blog), and I want to share this project with you. She has so many really neat things!

If you would like to have a go at a little 3D portrait, this is what you will need,

a 4″ flexi hoop, I used mine as an embroidery hoop and also as a mount

a circle of patterned background fabric

2 circles of plain coloured fabric, one 0.5cm smaller than the other

a circle of flesh coloured fabric, 7cm across

flesh coloured embroidery thread

pink embroidery threads, a light pink and a dark pink

selection of other embroidery thread for decoration, hair and lettering

2 grey beads

polyfil for stuffing

a circle of pink felt, 9cm across

needle

scissors

pins

and of course, a willing subject for your portrait!

Begin, by placing the background fabric, centrally, in the flexi hoop. Place the other 2 circles of plain fabric in the centre, one on top of the other, pin, and then sew using random straight stitches around the edge in some embroidery thread. I used a multicoloured thread to add an extra dimension to the embroidery.

Next, take the circle of flesh coloured fabric and sew a running stitch all the way around, 0.5cm in from the edge using the flesh coloured thread. Gently pull on the loose end to gather the circle, placing some polyfil inside before anchoring it shut with a few stitches. Turn this head shape, raw end side down, and place centrally on your base design. Sew it on with a few random stitches around the edge, you may find at this stage you can do a bit of ‘sculpting’ of the head shape with how you place your stitches.

Now, begin to add the hair. Chose a thread colour that matches your subject as best you can, and gradually build up the hair strand by strand, this can take a little while to get right, but keep going!.

To add the facial features, using the pink embroidery thread add some shading on the cheeks, I just added some crosses, but you could add some tiny french knots for freckles. Also add the grey beads for eyes, and a mouth in the darker pink. We’re not going for a 100% likeness here, it’s just a bit of fun!.

In the space, underneath the portrait head, you can add a name in backstitch, and I’ve also sewn on some french knots for decoration.

To tidy up the back, and hide all the loose ends, turn your embroidery over, and sew a running stitch round the edge of the background fabric, gather, and then secure with a few stitches.

Place the pink felt circle, over the top, and sew on with random straight stitches around the edge.

And there you go, all done! Happy stitching!