Tutorial:Versitle Seasonal Decor

Monday, January 19, 2009

I love using sewing hoops to decorate. Fabric is always easy to work with and very inexpensive. You can always find interesting prints in pillowcases and other scraps at your local thrift store. I took these Pictures in December, these were the colors that I used for Christmas. If you look carefully you can see that I kept several of the scraps in place for Valentines day and only swapped out the green ones. I keep all of the swatches tucked away together so that I can reuse them for different seasons. For more examples check out my post HERE (Fall). I also have some wooden ones in my craft room here. In this room I actually used some shelf paper in the hoops, just because I liked it better than any of the fabrics I could find. The hoops are easy to find. All of mine came from either the Avendale Flea Market or the United Methodist Childrens Home Sale. Some of the fabrics came from there as well.

1. Choose your fabrics. and hoops They can come from anywhere. Some of my hoops are quite small and don't take much fabric to fill.
2. Choose the portion of the fabric that you want to "Frame." This mostly applies to fl orals and toilles.
3. Place the bottom of the hoop under the fabric and the top piece (they come apart, these metal ones have springs and cork to cushion them) press down until they firmly hold the fabric in place. You may have to tug the fabric until there aren't any wrinkles. Be especially careful with stripes so that they don't get wavy.
4. Trim around the edges.
   
5. Hang.

Here are the ones that I have up right now for Valentines Day.