Firefly Fasination

I have been in the planning process of this one for a while.. it seems to be one of those projects with starts and stops, but one I have very much enjoyed.

Ingredients: Piece of main fabric, black felt, template for silhouette, 2 yellow LED's, 1 lily switch, 1 battery holder, conductive thread, embroidery thread, 8X10 canvas.

Tools: embroidery hoop, good scissors, thin needle with a tiny eye, embroidery needle, bees wax or a candle,  needle-nose pliers, hot glue gun, staple gun. A multimeter is nice to have to check your circuits as well (but not necessary)

Cut out a paper template for your silhouette, use to the felt silhouette. 

Hand stitch the felt piece on to your main piece of fabric. 

 Using an embroidery hoop stitch your fireflies 

 Gather your electrical components, use your needle nose pliers to curl the leads of the LED's for sewing, curl the positive lead a little different than the negative so it is easy to tell them apart once you get them on the piece. (see next few photos)

 I then draped the whole deal over the canvas to determine the placement of the battery holder and switch, then hot glued them and the LED's  to the fabric so they would be easier to work with. (be careful to only use a dab of hot glue and to avoid any possible interference with connections.
Sew with your conductive thread (use a tiny needle, the hole on the battery holder is little and you will need to go through it three or four times, also conductive thread loves to separate and fray so it is far easier to thread wit a tiny bit of bees/candle wax at the end) Sew from the positive lead on one LED, to the positive side of the battery holder and then to the positive lead on the other LED, use one piece of thread for this!

 Next sew from the negative lead of one LED to one side of the switch (switches are not polarized so it doesn't matter what side you use) Repeat with the second negative lead to the same side as the first.  Next sew from the other side of the switch to the battery holder. At this point you can pop in a battery and see if all is working correctly.  If not get out your multimeter and check your connections.
 To attach to the canvas start with the side with your electrical components. I have the battery holder on the inside of the canvas frame and the switch on the outside side for convenience. Position your battery holder and hot glue the fabric to the frame, use the same process with the switch. (I check my connections regularly to be sure I haven't caused any problems in the process)
 Next using hot glue and then a staple gun stretch (be gentle) the fabric over the frame. I plan on going back with some wide ribbon and covering up the staples,etc.

See the tiny switch.  I was going to put it on the inside but didn't want this to have to come off an on the wall to turn on.

Sunday is Pillowcase Day!!

This a great project for your extra collection of fabric.
 The most difficult part of this simple project for me is trying to keep the cats off the cutting board!

• Cut Three pieces of fabric (all 42" length...life the universe and everything?)

1. Main Piece 27" X 42"
2. Border Piece 9" X 42"
3. Accent Piece 3" X 42" (you can also use lace or in this example I used some of the bunches of blanket binding I have from making baby blankets)

•  Lay out the 9" Boarder piece face up

• Lay Main fabric pice face up on top of the boarder piece (align the raw edges along the 42" length)

• Iron the 3" accent piece in half with wrong sides together, lenghwise and lace face up on top of the mail piece, raw edeges even

Take the Main Fabric piece from the bottom and roll the fabric
up towards the top leaving about 3" from the raw edge.

Take the boarder piece from the bottom and fold
toward the top and pin all edges together (5 layers)

 Stitch a 1/2" seam along the edge, making a tube of fabric 

Turn the fabric right side out

Stitch the side and bottom seams
(you can serge the edges, make a french seam
or pink as well) 

Spoon handle bookmarks

I have been looking for more ways to use the spoon handles I remove when making the cameos.  They were starting to "collect"  My coworker suggested bookmarks (Thank you Lisa) So I gave it a go and am really enjoying how they are turning out.  I even tried a few with the handles on.
This is so easy not going to do much of a "how to" Basically Pound the heck out of the handle (or entire spoon) drill a hole in the end, string some waxed linen (or what ever your favorite thread) through the hole, bead away and you are done!