A jewellery box for Hope

My granddaughter Hope is three years old and loves sparkly jewellery. When I was thinking about what to give her for her birthday I decided to make a jewellery box for her with her name on it. I used to have an old oval box covered in material with a padded top and that was what I first thought of adapting but I found that I had disposed of it before we moved house. Back to the drawing board - so I toured the charity shops of Skipton looking for a replacement.

This is what I found - a denim handbag with pink embroidered flowers on the side, a pink lining and a flat top - for which I paid £1.75.

The top was the obvious place for her name so I traced the shape and added simple rounded letters to it. I tacked this to some sturdy shiny pale blue material from my stash using a contrasting green that I would be able to see and remove later. I then tacked round each letter and carefully removed the tracing paper.

 

  I decided that I would work each letter in a different colour to both match and compliment the bag. I went for red, pink, blue and white/silver and looked at my store of buttons and beads to see what I had that might be suitable - a delightful task! Unsurprisingly, as I am not a pink person myself, that was the colour that was lacking so I had to go shopping and spent about £7.

For each letter I began by sewing on a selection of buttons in the base colour. I then filled in the spaces around and under them with beads, which I added in runs of a few at a time and then couched firmly into  place. I also added some more beads or sequins to the centres of some of the buttons.

H O and P completed, E in progress

E in progress, closeup.

When the beading was finished I trimmed the material and hemmed it. I then covered the edge with some dark red rick-rack to neaten the edge.

Finally I pinned the finished embellishment on to the top of the bag and sewed it in place round the edge, easing it to fit. Here is the finished jewellry bag (into which I placed an oval pink cardboard box to stiffen the sides). I hope that Hope will enjoy her upcycled, repurposed and very glittery jewellery box!

Christmas presents catchup

Another long gap - but one of my excuses is that I spent a lot of time making things for Christmas presents! I now have more people to make presents for - including a grandson and a granddaughter which has really inspired me.

I decided to make a ball with a bell in it for baby Hope, with patchwork pentagons as I did for Julia, but this time with all the letters in felt. The material I used is a heavy-duty cotton which started life as a cushion cover and provided different mixes of blues and greens.

For Noah I branched out with my knitting and made a teddy bear in a lovely soft velour-type wool which I found in a sale. The knitting and making up were quite intricate but I was pleased with the result. I added features with embroidery wool and paws with brown felt.

The pattern suggested finishing the bear with a ribbon round the neck but I felt that with a baby in the house this might not be safe so I constructed a jacket with one button instead from some red and black wool which had not worked as i-chords.







As well as presents for children I also made another book cover, in a more conventional log-cabin patchwork.

And finally I made four brooches, all in the same kind a pattern with a central bead or button and a more of less symmetrical arrangement of beads going out from the centre to the edge, although I did vary that a little.

I made them in four colours, red, blue, violet and green, and decided to echo this blog by mounting them on card as you can see.

So that is what I have been doing since I last wrote but I am determined to keep up with making things and will be back when I have decided what to do next. 

I-chords, felt and beads combine

At a craft course at Glenthorne I learned how to knit i-chords on a circular needle. This was a real breakthrough for me because I saw how they could be used for jewellery and began experimenting with combining i-chords and beads.

My first attempt, at the beginning of 2008 was a single i-chord on 5 stitches in a combination of dark red wool and gold fingering thread. I made a loop and button fixing and decorated the centre front with a combination of beads and buttons.

 I gave it to a freind for her birthday but I did take a few photos first (although the focus was not too good for the detail!).                                                                                                                                                                                                  

There were several problems with this first attempt. The buttons etc that were lower than the chord would not lie flat but I wanted to do more than just sew things onto the chord itself. It was another workshop, this time about felting, that gave me an answer. Making felt of different thicknesses and putting together different shapes on top of one another gave me a base that I could make more three dimensional. I also discovered that as I covered it with beads my sewing pulled it into yet another shape.

So for my next attempt I made a two tier felt circle, sewed it together and added beads and a button to it, starting in the middle and working outwards. I also made the i-chord bigger by plaiting together three 3-stitch i-chords. Using bugle beads over two layers of felt added to the height of the finished centrepiece, but the whole necklace was not very large.

My next necklace was more ambitious. I started with quite a large felt construction and ended up with a big, bold, very sparkly centrepiece - much more complex and striking than I had expected. It was as if I was expressing a different side to my personality while I worked, adding more and more to the centre without planning the finished result.

I also changed the construction of the i-chord. I had bought some multi-coloured ribbon/wool on a trip to America and I used this to make three 3-stitch i-chords which I then plaited together. The finished felt and bead centrepiece was sewn onto this plait, quite low down so that it sat properly when worn. [Originally I had sewn it on too high up and this is what this photo shows]

Here are two more photos which show the height of the centrepiece from the side and some of the detail of the beading.

I have really enjoyed making and wearing these necklaces [although the ribbon i-chords do have a tendency to stretch- a fault that I am still working on] and in my next post will show you some more of my creations.