FNSI and some repurposing

Now what did I get up to for FNSI last night?  Which of those many projects listed in my last post did I work on?

Well, the binding on the table runner won out in the end.  I had worked on the quilting through the day, so by night I thought a bit of hand sewing would be good.  (full photo will come later).

I was working along just fine, then suddenly felt the needle dig into my leg.  I had dozed off with the needle down and must have moved my hand. That was a quick wake up.  

Today I needed a bit of light stitching.  This week I finally got around to joining in with the 52 weeks Scrap Challenge over here at Samelia's Mum, or the Facebook group here.  We are up to week 3, so there are still lots of projects to come, why not come and join in.  

The first week's project was a heart pincushion or ornament.  It can be made from leftovers of your favourite fabrics - those little bits you dont want to throw out but are really too small to do much with.  Or it can be leftovers from charm packs or whatever you like.  

I have a bundle of batik scraps that I dont want to throw out so I have used some of them for my heart.

I used gold thread and some of the embroidery stitches on my sewing machine for embellishing.

Week 3 project was for fabric covered jars or bottles.  I decided for this one to do it a bit differently. Last year on the quilt trail we were shown how to make a jar into a "fancy" pen holder. 

Find your thin strips of wadding - those useless little pieces about 1 to 1 `1/2 inches wide.  Wind them around the bottle, building up the middle section to achieve a shape like mine in the photo.  I will say though that I cheated a bit at that stage as I used a Roses Marmalade  jar which already has that shape, and added a bit more.  I wound the wadding tightly and glued down the ends only.  I also glued 2 pieces of wadding to the base of the jar.

I measured from the top of one side down to the bottom, across and up the other side back to the rim, and added  about 4 inches. Mine was 12 inches + the  4 inches.  I cut a circle 17 inches just in case I needed more - (didnt trust my own measurements).  I ran a gathering stitch about 1- 1/2 inch in from the edge, put the jar in the centre and pulled the gathering thread up.  A row of clear craft glue around the inside of the jar secured the fabric.  I put a rubberband tightly around the jar and covered it with the ribbon bow.  (The rubberband will perish in time so it really should be thin elastic I guess.)

And there it is, all finished and ready to hold pens or whatever I wish.

For some time now I have been wanting to find a better way to store my spools of ribbon.  I have seen various boxes and containers with the spools on a "dowel" etc.  Eventually I had the brainwave that I could use a little shelf unit I had.  This was a bathroom cupboard which had been a wedding gift - one of those with sliding mirrored doors .  In my folkart days when everything that couldnt run and hide got painted and decorated, I had painted cheeky little mice on it and it was used as a little display shelf.  Carla used it for some years as well, but eventually it came home again.  

I didnt expect to fill it with my supply of ribbons and trims but I did.  On top is a matching toilet roll holder that I painted at that same time, and it now holds the last 2 spools which wouldnt fit in the main one.

Got to love re-purposing when it works out so well.

Now to go and see what everyone else has been up to for FNSI.  You can too by going to our wonderful hostess/organiser, Wendy and see who has linked up.