Fabric Crackers
Last weekend we had a long one with an extra day off on Monday. The plan was to do very little - stay in the house and do things we want to do but don’t often manage to find the time to do. I didn’t want to do any boring stuff although we had a bit of tidying and cleaning to do on Saturday morning. I also managed to sleep for a lot of the morning too!
Once the boring stuff was all done I wanted to start doing some Christmas crafts. I really enjoyed having a bit of a play with my sewing machine the other weekend and wanted to carry on using it and try to make some pretty and fun stuff for Christmas. I started a few things but they’re not all finished yet so I thought I’d update you with this one that was incredibly easy to do and actually got finished in only about an hour or so.
I got the idea and pattern from Days Filled With Joy although this is me - I couldn’t just follow it completely could I?!
In the pattern the idea is to make tubes of fabric with ribbons attached around a toilet roll tube making it look like a Christmas cracker. We had been naught over the weekend and treated ourselves to a couple of tubes of Pringles as they were on offer. This gave me the inspiration to follow the pattern as it was done on Days Filled With Joy but just to enlarge it somewhat to cover the pringles tube.
I started by measuring the circumference of the tube to work out how wide the fabric should be cut (with an extra 1/2 inch added for the seam allowance).
A Pringles tube is apparently 9.5 inches around so I trimmed my fabric to make it square and then cut it 10 inches wide. I wasn’t sure how long to make it so I just went with it the full length of the fat quarter, crossed my fingers and hoped!
It seemed to be a fairly reasonable length once I had made the seams on the ends. The instructions from Days Filled with Joy said to fold the ends over twice and see to create a hem. I think this is the first time I’ve sewn a double folded hem so I was relatively pleased with myself for doing it. I’m sure the stitching might not be quite perfectly straight but it stayed together which is the most important thing.
Once I had done this the next task was to position the ribbons that will be tied round to make the cracker shape. I measured with the Pringles tube and made an estimation as to where it should be between the end of the fabric and end of the tube. For some reason I ended up measuring as 16.5 inches from the far end but as long as it’s even from both ends I don’t suppose it matters which end you measure it from.
I pinned the ribbons in place - ohh the ribbons I cut to 18 inches each as the pattern I was following said 16 for the smaller ones. I wasn’t sure what to do so just added a little bit for luck!
Once I had pinned both pieces of ribbon in place I realised that I had done it totally wrong and pinned them in the inside so I had to switch them around.
All that needed doing then was to pin the edge straight and sew it up into a tube...
Flip it the right way around...
Make sure the Pringles tube fitted inside (there was only momentary panic going on at this point!)
And tie up the ribbons at either end nice and tight to make it look like a cracker. I made two of these - both with the same patterned fabric but one in red and the other grey.
I love the way these have turned out. I think they will make great centrepieces for our dining table this Christmas. I would still like to make some smaller ones as per the original pattern as I think they look really good. I’m fairly sure the remaining section of each of the fat quarters is about the right width already to make the smaller ones (& I’ve been saving empty toilet roll tubes!)
I look forward to making these another weekend closer to Christmas. I hope you have enjoyed seeing the process of making these as much as I enjoyed doing it as they are so simple to make but I think they’re so effective and pretty the way they turn out. I’ll definitely be making some more soon.
Once the boring stuff was all done I wanted to start doing some Christmas crafts. I really enjoyed having a bit of a play with my sewing machine the other weekend and wanted to carry on using it and try to make some pretty and fun stuff for Christmas. I started a few things but they’re not all finished yet so I thought I’d update you with this one that was incredibly easy to do and actually got finished in only about an hour or so.
I got the idea and pattern from Days Filled With Joy although this is me - I couldn’t just follow it completely could I?!
In the pattern the idea is to make tubes of fabric with ribbons attached around a toilet roll tube making it look like a Christmas cracker. We had been naught over the weekend and treated ourselves to a couple of tubes of Pringles as they were on offer. This gave me the inspiration to follow the pattern as it was done on Days Filled With Joy but just to enlarge it somewhat to cover the pringles tube.
I started by measuring the circumference of the tube to work out how wide the fabric should be cut (with an extra 1/2 inch added for the seam allowance).
It seemed to be a fairly reasonable length once I had made the seams on the ends. The instructions from Days Filled with Joy said to fold the ends over twice and see to create a hem. I think this is the first time I’ve sewn a double folded hem so I was relatively pleased with myself for doing it. I’m sure the stitching might not be quite perfectly straight but it stayed together which is the most important thing.
Once I had done this the next task was to position the ribbons that will be tied round to make the cracker shape. I measured with the Pringles tube and made an estimation as to where it should be between the end of the fabric and end of the tube. For some reason I ended up measuring as 16.5 inches from the far end but as long as it’s even from both ends I don’t suppose it matters which end you measure it from.
I unpinned both pieces of ribbon one at a time and repositioned them back on the right side of the fabric.
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