In part 3 of n, I’m sharing a couple of smaller things that I made for Christmas. One was an experiment, the other was a gift for my sister.
Some time ago I’d seen a video tutorial for a honeycomb ornament made out of paper. It looked quite straightforward and effective and I wondered whether I could make something similar in fabric. With Christmas coming up, I decided it was worth a go! I cut a number of circles from green fabric and lightweight wadding, then sewed pairs of fabric circles right sides together with one circle of wadding, leaving a gap for turning through.
To reduce bulk, I carefully trimmed back the wadding and clipped the seams before I turned through and topstitched each padded disc:
Once my discs were complete, I joined them in pairs by using my sewing machine’s couching foot and some metallic gold embroidery thread, leaving a tail at the bottom of each disc.
Then the tricky part began! Working out how to “stack” my discs to make a spherical shape that wasn’t too distorted was surprisingly tricky, and I pursued several unsuccessful options before I worked out how to arrange them best. That done, I got out my seed bead collection and started stitching the disc edges together in an alternating arrangement to create the honeycomb effect:
A ribbon for hanging and it’s complete! Certainly an interesting challenge, and I have ideas now for how to do a somewhat easier version. As an aside, I was really impressed by the gold embroidery thread – it put up with a lot of abuse while I was arranging the discs, but it didn’t shred and it still looks good.
The other smaller project I made was a little decorated wooden box for my sister to keep odds and ends of makeup in on her dressing table – something she’d asked for specifically. I found a little pre-made wooden box for £1 in The Works that looked perfect for the job, plus it had little windows for pictures or photos – just right for a little photo of my niece to really personalise it. 🙂 When I got the box home, I used it as a template to cut card shapes of each side, then painted the inside of the box with black acrylic paint and varnished it. While it was drying, I dug out some nice scraps of furnishing fabric I’d picked up recently and some lightweight wadding and covered the card shapes:
I really like this fabric, there was just enough to cover the box and it’s the kind of thing my sister likes, too. 🙂 To attach the wadding and fabric to the card, I used glue dots – it’s the first time I’ve used them and I was very impressed, they stick really well!
To zhuzh the panels up more, I again dug out my bead and sequin stash and decorated the edge of the hearts and sprinkled beads and sequins across the surfaces before hot-gluing the panels to the sides of the varnished wooden box:
Couched gold braid finished off the edges and some black felt covered the bottom to give a nice finish. Other than the wooden box, everything I used came from stash. I’m choosing to see that as a good thing! 😀 My niece is really taken with it too (although I suspect that’s something to do with a 2yo’s self-admiration of a picture of herself!), so apparently I need to make something similar for her! I might make myself one too, to have in my sewing room for pencils and pens (and my hera marker, if I ever figure out where it disappeared to).
