Hi there ! Today, I have a few tips and tricks to share with you about that many sewists and crafters already know : the fabric necklace.
Made with a long strip of fabric, beads and knots, you can find a tutorial here :http://www.pinterest.com/pin/480900066434620988/
In this post, I propose another way to make it. The principal is still the same one of course, but I have other ideas for stuffing and some suggestions for embellishments.
In fact, I didn’t have enough beads to put inside the tube (I should say I had some but I wanted to keep my pretty plain wooden beads, not to hide them into the fabric !), I needed a substitute.
First, I put some “boules de cotillons" or "cotillon balls", small colorful paper balls, very popular in Europe and initially made for parties. In fact it’s very commune to use them for craft and it worked very well for making the necklace. Unfortunately I didn’t have enough cotillons to make more than one. Otherwise, because it’s just impossible to get some here in the US, it wasn’t a good solution for sharing. Btw, generally we can find about everything in the US except, cotillons and mint sirup :(
So, I decided to make my owns balls with… searching and searching… I finally tried aluminum foil and it works ! In addition you can make every size and shape, easy peasy you can feed the tube !
For embellishments I tried different ornamentations : flowers with tissue cotton fabric (from A.L.Wrigley “I love to sew”), neon ribbons, silver cord pompons, tulle or silver cord flowers. As you have probably noticed, I use silver in many projects for several months as well for clothing as decoration, my new addiction.
I show you how to make the flowers and tassels with silver cord, I love the result. To make tassels with that, you just have to use a seam ripper to fray the cord endings. For flowers, you have just to make several stitches separating the petals (don’t forget to cut the tails at the end). For the closure, it can be pretty to use a fabric matching with embellishments like I did with the blue necklace with pink flowers. But don’t forget to decide to add this different piece of fabric on the strip prior to sew the tube.
I hope you love these fabric necklaces and that my suggestions will inspire you to make your own !
For my part, I’m looking forward to make some with kids, so cool and fun project for beginners :)
