Sunday, December 13, 2009

Simple to Make Fabric Covered Napkin Rings



On my last post about sewing a table runner, I mentioned that I would be posting matching napkin rings. These napkin rings are super easy to make. No sewing necessary.  All you need is a small bit of fabric and your glue gun, and a toilet paper roll (paper towel roll will work here too).  I'm using the same fabric that I used to create my table runner, so it matches perfectly.  Anyway, let's get to it:




Materials:

- Fabric of your choosing, cut in a rectangle big enough to wrap around the roll, and stick in on the sides. (~ 6.5" x 3.5")
- 1/3 of a toilet paper roll.
- Glue gun.

How to:


1.  Glue down one of the short edges of your fabric onto the rolls shown in the picture. Make this as straight as possible.




2.  Slowly glue down the fabric onto the roll by putting glue on the side edges, an inch or two at a time, and pressing down the fabric onto the glue.  Continue until the roll is covered, and you have an inch or so of fabric left.

3. Fold in the fabric that's left and glue it down.





4.  Add glue to the one half of the inside of the cardboard (all the way around) and fold in the fabric onto the glue.  Repeat on the other side.




That's it.  Short, Sweet and Simple... with just a dab of danger (I tend to burn myself at least once with hot glue).


Saturday, December 5, 2009

Simple to Sew Reversible Table Runner



This past Thanksgiving, we decided to splurge a bit and grow up a bit by buying a new dining set to put in our dining room, where our pool table use to be.  Anyway, the weekend just before Thanksgiving, I was browsing around Joann's and found this fabric that I liked and decided to make a table runner with it.  I also found another fabric that was plain but I liked how it looked with the first fabric.  However, I didn't really know how long my table was when I bought the fabric (we hadn't assembled the table yet) so I only bought 2 yards. Incidentally, this turned out to be a good mistake. :-)  Instead of making it a solid fabric all the way across, I decided to cut it in half and put a small amount of the second fabric in the middle (like shown in the picture). Along side that, I also decided to make it reversible because I wanted some variety.  Anyway, here's what I came up with.

1. I ended up using about 1 yard each of fabric (2), but it all depends on the size of your table or how long you want the table runner. to be. Cut the fabric so that there are 2 fabric pieces of each design with the size of 12" x 1 yard, as well as a 12" x 6" piece of each design.

2.  Make each side of the table runner, by putting the the right side of Fabric A of the long fabric, with the right side of Fabric B with the short fabric on the 12" side.  Sew the 12" side together.  Put the other Fabric A long piece's right side to the same Fabric B short fabric piece, right side with the free 12" side together.  Do the same with the remaining fabric. Something like this.





3.  Put both the right sides of these fabrics together.  Line up the short piece center fabric of each side, together. Pin them together so they don't move


4. Sew nearly all the way around, starting near the middle area, to ensure that the middle fabrics line up. Leave a 6" hole.

5. Iron on some fusible interfacing (optional) to make the runner more stable.Also, I actually did this earlier on (before step 4), but I think it works to do it here instead.

6. Going thru the 6" hole, flip the fabric outside out and iron the edges down.




7.  Sew around the table runner to close up the 6" hole and to give it a sewn finish.



That's it... you're done.  You now have a reversible runner. It's simple and it works. :-)

 

Thursday, December 3, 2009

Amazon's 25 Days of Free

Last year, Amazon did their 25 days of Free campaign in which they released a new holiday song for downloadable for free on the 25 days til Christmas.  This year their doing it again.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=dm_tw_25days?docId=1000453281

Check out the songs... they're only on Day 3, so much much more to appear.

Oh, and if you're not quite ready for holiday songs, or want something more today is their last day for their $5 mp3 albums.

http://www.amazon.com/b/ref=dm_tw_blackfriday?node=2236008011

Happy Shopping and Happy Listening. :-)

If you wanna hear more about the amazonmp3 deals, just follow their twitter feed @amazonmp3.