Easy Treat Jars (Tutorial)

Welcome Back Cauldron Crafters!

Today, we're going to create easy treat jars from recycled glass sauce jars.

Supplies Needed:

A glass sauce jar with a lid (or as many as you want!)
A 2" strip of fabric (or ribbon or twine, if you prefer)
Fabric scrap about 7' square
Small scrap of batting
Hot glue gun
A spider ring (I got a whole bunch at the dollar store)

Remove your label from your glass sauce jar and set aside. It's hard to get all the gunk off, but since these will be filled with candy and treats, I just put the gunky side to the wall and never even notice it ;)

Now, take the lid to your jar, and cut a circle out of your batting that is the same size. Don't worry about perfect edges - they just plain ol' don't show! Use a few dots of hot glue to attach it to the lid.

(Like my scratched up table? Yeah, me too!)





Now, lay out your fabric scrap on top of the jar lid and center it. Hold the center down as shown in the photo, and start applying hot glue to the edge of the jar lid a little at a time. I like to do about an inch, and then smooth the fabric down over it, then another inch of glue,  and so on...

Once you have your fabric fully applied to the edge of your jar, place the lid back on the jar. It just makes this next step a little easier because you won't be trying to twist fabric and hold a little lid at the same time as applying glue!

Take your 2" strip of fabric, and twist it like so:

Using one small dot of hot glue, apply the twisted fabric to the edge of your jar. This is just your starting point and helps to secure it. Make sure you have a tail of an inch or two before the dot - this won't be glued down.

Now, continue twisting your fabric a bit at a time, and using the same gluing method as you used to put the fabric on the jar, start adding the twisted strip around the outside edge of the lid. The twisted fabric naturally curves a bit, so just add glue as you go, and hold it down for a few seconds until it sets:



Once you've got your twisted fabric applied to the jar lid, and you're back at your starting point, trim any excess so you have an equal tail to the one you left at the beginning - about 1-2".

Now, take that plastic spider ring, and chop off the edges of the ring as shown. You still want a little of the ring part, but not the whole thing:





A quick dot of hot glue right on top of the twisted fabric, in the place where the starting and ending point meet, and press that little spider right into place.

Trim up your excess fabric to a shape that's pleasing, and fill with your favorite treat:

(Mmm, Candy Corn. Or as Kid calls 'em: "Orange Triangles"

Cuz... well, you know, Candy Corn is just too hard to say!)



Easy enough, right? Don't forget to add your photos to the Flickr Group and Link Up to the Fabric Donkey page for a chance to win the Fat Quarter Bundle from Riley Blake Designs!

Creating a Wonky House Quilt Block

Hey, Cauldron Crafters!

Remember my Haunted House Quilt? I've had a few questions on how to create a wonky house block, so I've taken a few photos of an extra block that was made into a pillow for y'all. Remember, I loosely followed the instructions from UnRuly Quilting, but I've wonked my block a bit more, so I'll show you how to add the little characters and so on.

First, we're going to need scraps. Fussy cut yourself some characters if you'd like them to appear in your door and window - I've used both Riley Blake's Boo to You Scatter print and the purple print below, found at Joann Fabrics:

You'll also need various other cuts of fabric - nothing more than a fat quarter - and a bit of background fabric. For my 12.5" blocks for the quilt, I used about 8-10" WOF of background fabric.

This block creates a TON of waste, so you really have to commit to the look and prepare yourself for exactly how much fabric goes into one little block. 

We're going to take our fussy cut little characters and add some frames around them. To do this, I usually use scraps from other projects, but if you're cutting from a fat quarter, cut your strips to be at least 1.5" wide each to start. You'll lose a half inch in each seam allowance.

Add the frames around each side of the character square as shown. If you're choosing to have the open-door look shown, make sure your door piece is to one side, and it is at least as wide as the character cut:

Square up as shown.. you can choose to make this part a little more wonky by cutting at angles. Mine are slightly wonky:

Now, we need some house around these guys! Cut yourself some strips of your house fabric, and add one strip to each of the sides of your little guys. Cut another strip to add some distance between them. What, you want measurements? Ha. What are those?! Just kidding. I cut my middle strip to be about 14" on this one, because my block needed to be 21" square for my giant pillows. It's okay if your strips are a little longer or shorter than each other - just so long as they're tall enough to meet the height of our fun guys!

Trim up any funky edges- you want your strips to all be even. They can be "uneven", in the manner that they'll be wonky, but you want the edges of the orange and the door/window to match up with each other. Make sense?

Now stitch your three sections together to form your house, and trim as desired:

Now, we're going to add pieces of our background fabric to each side of the house. Size, again, is dependant on your project and how big you want your block to be. Make sure you've got an extra few inches in width - you're going to wind up trimming things down and you don't want it to be too skinny!

To add your roof, cut a rough triangle that is wider than your house by at least 2". You want it to overhang a little bit. We need to add the background fabric to this before we add it to the house - think of it as two separate blocks that you'll join together later on.

This part is where the most waste occurs for me. You need to create a large enough piece to make your block big enough, which means a long and wide piece. You'll be adding it to the slope of the roof like so:

If you choose to add a chimney, add it between two chunks of the black, before adding it to the roof triangle.

Using the other side of the roof as your guideline, trim the excess background fabric off so that you have an even edge to add the other half of the background fabric to. Stitch together, trim the bottom, and add to the house section as shown:

Now, you can stop here, or you can add spooky steps! To add spooky steps leading to the door, cut 1.5" strips out of a print and 1.5" strips out of the background fabric. Join together on the short end, and stagger their placement, stitching to the bottom of the block one at a time:

And MAGIC! We have a wonky house block. You can choose to make this more wonky if you so desire - the wonkiness is entirely up to you. Keep in mind that the sharper the angles, the more waste you'll have.

Lather, rinse, and repeat as many times as you want to make a quilt top, or quilt as is and create a Wonky Haunted House Pillow Cover!

Don't forget to link up any projects you've created over at Fabric Donkey for a chance to win the Riley Blake Trick or Treat Fat Quarter Bundle and add them to the Flickr Group!

Oh, finally, a little wonk!

Versatile Chalkboard Sign

Hey hey, Cauldron Crafters!

Last year, while I was gathering Halloween crafting ideas, I scoured the Martha Stewart site. Love her or hate her, the woman's got some good stuff. (Even if her site does take eleventy billion hours to load.)

So I ran across this: http://www.marthastewart.com/photogallery/outdoor-decorations-for-halloween#slide_27 . Simple and cute enough... just use a dollar store chalkboard, hang with a length of chain.

But I can't just leave ideas alone. Nope.

Last year, my dad cut me some arrow shaped pieces of scrap wood. What for?

(Image found at http://fuisti.blogspot.com/)

A directional sign, pointing to all the different elf workshops and whathaveyou, of course.

Except I never got around to painting it. So I have some arrow shaped pieces of wood that were just begging for attention.

I started with some acrylic paint in a spooky green, and painted up the edges of my sign, then added 3 coats of chalkboard paint to the front face of the sign. Add a bit of hot glue, with some orange buttons shaped conspicuously like a pumpkin... a length of ribbon stapled to the back...

and you have a directional Trick or Treat sign!

Since the sign itself is not specifically Halloween oriented, the words can be erased and re-written to direct your Thanksgiving guests to, say, the dessert table!

Mine will be hanging in my front window, facing the trick or treaters... as soon as it's socially acceptable to have the exterior of my house decorated for Halloween ;)

Don't forget to add your images to the Flickr Group, and link up to the Fabric Donkey for a chance to win the Riley Blake fat quarter bundle of Trick or Treat!

A Totally Rad Trick Or Treat Bag from A Grocery Tote

Hey there, Cauldron Crafters!

Pretty much every major store in America now offers "green" shopping bags - pressed poly/plastic totes in a decent size, with a little plastic insert to keep the shape at the bottom. They come in a variety of colors, green being the most popular, and typically have a big ol' logo right dab smack in the middle. Pfft, these people think I'm a billboard? Not so!

PRE-WARNING: Do NOT NOT NOT iron this bag. You will hate it and me and curse us both as you drive to the store for a new iron and a new bag. The poly/plastic melts like crazy and sticks to the iron. Not that I'd know...

Supplies needed:
A pre-made grocery store tote
About 3/4 yard quilter's cotton for lining
Scraps for embellishment
Hot Glue Gun

99 cents gets you one of these:

(Okay, I'm a little bit of a billboard)

Make sure yours is a festive Halloween color!

We're going to line it and embellish a bit so our kid has a cooler tote bag for his trick or treating adventure! Or, if you're kidless, you can be awesome like me and use it to tote your various things back and forth to your office.

Our first step is going to be embellishing. My bag has logos on both sides, so I need to cover both logos up.

Side one is going to be a spider web with a spider. Take a scrap of fabric and stitch straight down to the front of the bag, over the logo. Be careful to avoid accidently catching the straps or other side of the bag when stitching! I used Aurifil's Zebra Variegated thread in a tight zig zag to create my basic web.

 

Make sure not to stitch down the outside edges of your fabric scrap - we're going to be snipping away those outside curves to give ourselves a nice spiderweb shape:

Once you've finished snipping away, you'll have this:

Grab yourself a smidgen of black fabric, and make a little spider dangling down as so:

Again, with the spider, I used a tight zig zag in Aurifil's Zebra. Awesome thread!

You can embellish these however you'd like - let your imagination go wild! I put a bat on the other side of mine, using a microsoft word clipart image as a template:

Now, to the lining!

Before you insert your lining, you will want to take that little hard plastic sheet that comes in the tote bag to give it the shape, insert it into your bag, and affix it to the bottom. I did this with a few dots of hot glue.

Your lining size will be determined by your exact bag. My bag measured 12" wide by 13" tall and 8" deep. I added .5" to each of these measurements for seam allowance and therefore needed to cut : two (12.5"x13.5"), two (8.5"x13.5") pieces, and one 8.5"x12.5" piece for my bottom.

Taking my  two (12.5"x13.5") and two (8.5"x13.5") pieces, I stitched one 12.5" width piece to one 8.5" width piece, stitching along that 13.5" side. Repeating this for the other pair, I now have two pairs. Stitch them together - you should now be looking at a long piece that is made up of your 12.5"+8.5"+12.5"+8.5", stitched in that order. Join the last edge together to form a loop:

Take your 8.5"x12.5" (bottom) piece and mark a small dot 1/4" inside each of the four corners. This is your marking line for your seam allowance. Pin the bottom piece to one seam, making sure to match up your 8.5" side with one of the 8.5" wide panels in your loop. Pin into place, using your dot as a guide:

Stitch alongside your two short (8.5") sides first, leaving the 12.5" side open. Once both short sides are sitched, you will stitch the 12.5" side. When approaching your corners, fold the excess carefully to allow your stitching to get right up to that original dot:

When you've finished this stitching line, you're going to have a bag that looks an awful lot like the tote bag you already have. Congrats, you just made your lining!

To attach it to the bag, you need to first pin down your existing handles as shown:

Tuck the tote bag inside of your lining, with your lining flipped inside out - so that the outside of the bag, and the pretty side of the lining are facing each other. Stitch about 1/4" from the top edge, leaving a hole for turning.

(See how the seams on the lining face outward?)

Carefully pull your tote bag out through that hole, turning it inside out. This is going to be a little bit tricky because of the hard plastic insert at the bottom. I found that if I rolled that insert up to push it through the hole, it went a bit smoother.

Now, you're looking at this - a bag with a big poof of fabric at the top!

Push your lining down into your bag - it should match up perfectly!

To close the hole you opened for turning, we'll do a complete topstitch around the top of the bag. I unpinned my handles at this point so that I could stitch with them in the upward position.

You have a few options here. You can either pinch your lining and bag together tightly so the lining doesn't show to the front, and topstitch with it like so:

Or, because of the stiffness of the actual tote, you can allow it to roll naturally and topstitch with about a half inch of your orange lining showing, like I did:

 

Love it! A custom tote bag in under an hour!

Don't forget to upload your finished photos to the Flickr Group, and Link Up at Fabric Donkey for a chance to win the grand prize - a Riley Blake Doodlebug Designs Trick or Treat Fat Quarter Bundle!

A Sweet Coin Purse (Tutorial by Val)

Hi Ghosts and Ghouls this is Val from over at Keeping Up With My Conqueror again, anyone interested in a tutorial? How about a tutorial along with a free embroidery pattern? Yes I am trying to bribe you all to love me, is it working?

No? Well fine then :P

For those who are interested in the tutorial and pattern keep reading, today I'm gonna show y'all how to make this coin purse.

I'll walk you through making the pattern for the purse, transferring the embroidery pattern and putting it all together. If you already know how to do all this and just want the patterns I'm making them available on Google Docs.

So shall we begin?

What you need:

1) fabric for interior and exterior, I used Essex Linen for my exterior, and a regular quilting cotton for my interior, you'll need two (2) five (5) inch squares of each of your fabrics

2) sewing implements (sewing machine *totally optional, but speeds up the process* needle and thread *can't get around this one sorry, you'll have to do a wee bit of hand sewing no matter what, scissors)

3) embroidery floss

4) embroidery hoop (you possibly can get around using this, but you may hate yourself in the morning)

5) Washable transfer medium, I use washable transfer markers, if you have a preferred method, use it :)

6) pouch closure (I got mine at JoAnn Fabrics, if you don't have one close to you most craft stores have them, failing that you can order one online, mine is a sew in one, I haven't used a glue in one yet so I can't speak on those, sorry)

The first thing we want to do is make our pouch pattern.

Take your pouch snap and trace it, make sure to mark where your hinges are. Don't forget about those hinges, I've made that mistake a few times and if you don't you'll have wonky sides, my darling husband likes to point mine out, yes he's a peach.

Sketch out the shape you'd like the rest of your pouch to be. 

And add your seam allowances.

I only bothered to do one side since I can never manage to make them identical, I just made sure to remember to place my pattern on a fold when I traced the liner and flipped it when I traced it for the exterior.

(like this)

As you can see from the pictures I went from using sketch paper to using parchment paper, the only reason I did this is because I had forgotten that I wanted to scan the pattern and make it available to you readers, there's nothing wrong with using regular paper for this project. If I had regular access to a scanner I would have just used my original paper, but I don't so I didn't.

Now stop and assess your progress, have your helper make fun of you a bit, soon comes the embroidery part.

If you don't want to bother doing your own pattern I'm making mine available to you through Google Docs, I don't know diddly about scaling and adjusting scale with all the interference of scanning and all your new fangled technology so please double check your measurements :)

Alright now that you have your pattern trace it onto your fabric. THIS IS IMPORTANT, DO NOT CUT IT OUT. Especially if you're using linen like me, it'll fray and you'll be sad, there'll be tears.

Once you have your pattern traced to your fabric it's time to transfer your embroidery pattern. For this I taped my pattern to a sunny window and traced it, you can also cheat and use your computer monitor (I've done this before and it works just fine too)

Now we pick out our embroidery floss and hoop up our work. I'm using DMC B5200 (white), 444 (yellow), and 720 (orange). You totally don't have to use those exact colors, candy corn are yummy no matter what color they are :)

Now I like my embroidery lines nice and thick so I used 2 strands doubled up, this is just my preference and you can stitch and way that works best for you!

I started with my white, and did my faces and words last using a single strand of floss to keep them small and more dainty.

For my eyes I used French knots and the rest of my stitching was all the back stitch.

Once we're finished with our embroidery we can cut out our fabrics, Yay!

Then with right sides together pin (if you're good) and sew your liner and your exterior, starting and stopping at your hinge marks (backstitch a few times on both of those) leaving the tops open and a small hole at the bottom of your liner for turning.

Now turn your exterior fabric right side out and put it inside your liner fabric (right sides will be together here)

If you're a pinner, pin. We're going to sew our exterior to our liner, make sure to back stitch.

There will be a gap at your intersections, that's ok we're going to sew those by hand (you can do this!)

See? I told you that you can do it! Now we turn it!

And stitch closed our turning hole, you can be good and do it by hand, or if you're too impatient like me, a zig zag works just fine :) Ignore my sad stained ironing board cover, I need a new (much bigger!) ironing board but that's on the back burner ;)

After that all we have to do is finish it up! Fit each side into your frame, I like to use a bit of masking tape or painters tape to hold it together, like so...

That way it doesn't try to get away while you're doing your last bit of hand sewing (yay!)

Start at one side (I started at the left since I'm a lefty) and weave it though, it's a little bugger to get your needle lined up but you'll get the hang of it pretty quickly :)

Once you get to the end, go back the other way.

do the same on your other side....

And you're finished!

Now if you already have a few of these package it up and send it to some sucker who you conned into taking your experiments.

Here are the links to patterns in Google Docs:

Pouch 
Candy Corn Embroidery

I hope you enjoyed working on this little project, if you have any questions make sure to let me know, and if you make one please link up to the Cauldron Crafts Flickr Group!