Today I'm sharing a little project from Kristen Robinson for making sweet bag for your jewelry or to hold a special little gift. Kristen makes these bags out of wool felt or linen; you can use purchased felt or make it even more personal by upcycling a wool sweater into felt or upcycling your fabric scraps of choice.
Felt Jewelry Bag with Heart Embellishment
Materials:
- 1 piece wool felt*, approximately 11" x 5-1/2"
- Straight pins
- Scrap of red felt
- Embroidery floss and needle
- Needle and sewing thread or sewing machine and thread
- Iron
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These jewelry bags can be made from upcycled
sweaters or fabric scraps and are perfect
for gift giving.
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1. Fold up one end of the felt rectangle, about 4-1/2" and pin in place.
2. Hand or machine stitch each side of the doubled fabric.
3. Fold the top of the rectangle over onto the stitched end, to make a flap. Press.
4. Freehand cut a heart shape. (This is how I justify all the felt scraps I keep: because I can upcycle them into embellishments.)
5. With the embroidery floss, stitch the heart to the flap. You can use a cross stitch or take a stitch in the middle leaving two long tails on the front side, cutting and tying the thread ends into a knot on the front.
*To upcycle a sweater of your own or one you picked up at thrift store, first make sure it is 100% wool. (Washable wool will not work.)
Zip any zippers and remove tags or embellishments from the sweater and wash in a washing machine on the hottest cycle. (Note: if you have a front-loading machine, you may have to repeat the cycle more than once. Or, you can put a similar-colored towel in with the sweater to increase friction.)
Toss the sweater in your dryer and dry on the hottest setting. When it's dry, you should now have a felted sweater that is many times smaller. You can cut the sweater into pieces for sewing and upcycle crafts, and the edges won't fray.
Kristen is a master at turning something cast off into something beautiful with her upcycling ideas. She has a new Cloth Paper Scissors Workshop video, Romantic Bezels: Mixed-Media Jewelry From Found Objects, where she shows you how to turn found metal into three-dimensional art using resin and jewelry-making tools.
And now you have a cute little bag to put your handmade jewelry in!
