Jersey Knit Bracelets

I came across a link to this site on Pinterest and thought the bracelets were soooo cute and they have a great tutorial, so I decided to give it a try.  

I had a bright pink T-shirt that I had put in my arts and crafts bin so I cut a piece that was about 1 inch by 4 ft around the bottom.  (Actually, I cut 3 because that's what the directions said to do.) 

I couldn't really understand what their directions were telling me to do when they started talking about cutting the holes and tying the knot, so I experimented and I think I figured out what they were talking about.  The goal is to connect two of the pieces of fabric together, so you cut the 2 holes (one in one piece of string, and one in another), line them up, and then put the end of one through the others so that they are attached to each other.  Pretty much what they say to do, but not understanding what the end goal was, I got a bit confused.  Mine didn't form a knot, so I'm still not positive that I did what they wanted...

 

I attempted to do a 3 finger one and it was WAY to thick so I immediately took it out and did a 2 finger bracelet.  After completing that, I decided that it was still too thick on my wrist, so I attempted to figure out a single finger bracelet.  It worked really well, and isn't too thick for me.  And bonus - I only need one 4 foot strip to make one that fits around my wrist, so no need to connect them together.   

Here's how I did the 1 finger bracelet:

I wrapped the piece of T-shirt around my index finger 3 times (the bottom one was just to hold with my thumb for the first couple of stitches).  

Then I took the middle one and looped it over my finger.

Then I wrapped the loose end around my finger again, and repeated looping the middle loop over my finger.

Once I had done this a few times, I could let go of that bottom stitch with my thumb so there were only 2 loops on my finger.  I repeated the process taking the bottom loop over the top loop and my finger, then wrapping the loose end around my finger until the bracelet was big enough to go around my wrist.

Then I took the bracelet off of my index finger, and put the end of the other side of the bracelet through and pulled it tight.

To finish it, tie a knot with the two ends together and cut the extra length off.  

The whole bracelet takes about 5 minutes to make once you have the fabric cut.  It's super easy to do and makes great (and cheap) little presents for friends or little girls. 

Quiet Book - The Finished Product

So I think the whole quiet book turned out pretty good.  My little girl seems to like it a lot too!  Here's a photo summary of the pages and the finished product.  

Quiet Book - Flowers - Page 9

The materials that I used for the flower page were, bright colored felts for the flowers, green felt for the stems and leaves, brown felt for the flower pot, 4 yellow buttons, some Wonder Under and my Pellon page. 

I started by drawing the flowers on my Wonder Under, cutting them out, ironing them onto my different felts, then fusing them to the same felts to make them double the thickness. 

I attempted to sew around the edges of the flowers, but I kept jamming up my sewing machine with the double thickness of the felt.  I did manage to use my nifty button hole foot to sew some decent buttonholes.  I did manage to sew a lot of crappy buttonholes as well that I had to rip out and redo.

Next, I cut some pieces of Wonder Under for the stems, ironed them to the green felt and fused them to my page.  

Then I drew a flower pot on my Wonder Under, ironed it to the brown felt and fused it to the page.  

Next, I hand sewed my 4 yellow buttons on.  I hand sewed them because I remember in my sewing class attempting to use the machine to sew on buttons and I broke 2 needles and I didn't feel like dealing with that.  

Next I cut out some leaves from my Wonder Under, ironed them to the green felt and fused them to the page. 

 

To finish up the page, I sewed around the pot with brown thread, and then sewed the sides of the stems and up the middle of each leaf with green thread.  

Quiet Book - Finishing it Up

 

So now that my pages were all completed, I needed to some how make them into a book. 

I started out started out by fusing the backs of the pages together in the right order because I found that sewing is a lot easier when fabrics are fused together already.  Then I sewed around the edges.  

Next I used a 1/8 inch hole puncher to punch holes in each page.  I did one at 1 1/2 inches from the top and one the same distance from the bottom, and then one at 5 inches (right in the middle).  Then I used string to tie the pages together.  I actually had to use tape to tape the ends like shoe strings to feed them through the holes.   

Making the cover was quite a bit more challenging.  I picked out some adorable fabric and got a whole yard because I wasn't sure if I'd mess things up.  I'll have enough left to make her a cute skirt now :)  I measured the thickness of my book and it was about 3 inches so I cut a piece of Pellon that was 19in x 10in and using Wonder Under, fused it to my cover material making sure there was plenty of fabric hanging off of the ends. 

Then I used Wonder Under to fuse another piece of fabric the same size to the other side of the Pellon (so the Pellon was completely covered with fabric with lots of extra fabric hanging over the sides.  I sewed around the sides and then I sewed the borders of the spine so that it would fold easier.  

Then I folded the whole thing in half and punched holes at 1 1/2 inch from each end (measured from where the Pellon started) and then in the middle at 5 inches.  It was very thick, so I actually bent my hole puncher and had to use a screwdriver and hammer to finish the last one.  oops. 

Next, I cut where the spine was, folded it over (cut some extra material off) and sewed it down. 

Next I flipped it over to what would be the inside and sewed the corners like the picture below and cut the extra material off. 

This is what the corners look like when you flip it over and turn it right side out. 

After I had finished all of the corners, I folded the sides down so that they were only 1 1/4 inch long and pinned them, cut some of the extra material off and sewed it down.  I actually sewed once close to the end and another time closer to the book. 

Then I pinned in and the sewed in the zipper. I didn't do it the fancy correct way to do a zipper, I just sewed the zipper to the fabric.  It lined up just fine along each side, so it was a lot more simple than I thought it was going to be. 

I put the pages inside and pulled the strings through the holes and tied the knots on the outside.

Quiet Book - Farm - Pages 2 & 3

 










 






The farming pages took quite a bit of effort to make.  For supplies, I used my 2 Pellon pages, stiff green felt, stiff red felt, and an assortment of colors of regular felt, as well as some Wonder Under, 2 pieces of fusible Velcro, and some little felt flower stickers.n

I started out with the flower field that you can use as a background for the finger puppets.   I cut a hill out of Wonder Under, ironed it to some dark green stiff felt and fused it to the Pellon page.  Using the Wonder Under, I fused a yellow sun in the corner, stuck some flowers onto the hill, and sewed around the top part of the hill. 

Once I was done with I cut some Wonder Under to be the ground behind the barn.  I tried to continue the hill down, but I forgot that I had to do the mirror image of what I want so I ended up having to reverse the pages from what I had in my head.  It totally worked out fine though.  I ironed the Wonder Under to the stiff green felt and fused it to my Pellon page.  

 

Then I used my barn template that I found here to cut a tan rectangular piece that was almost as wide as the barn and about half as high as the doors and sewed around the left, right, and bottom sides to create the pocket to hold the finger puppets. 

Using the template, I traced and cut the barn out of the Wonder Under.  The I cut out the doors and the upper window and ironed it onto a piece of stiff red felt. 

After removing the upper window, I used that as a guide to cut out a piece of Wonder Under, ironed it to a piece of tan felt and fused it onto the page (using my barn to make sure that it went in the right spot on the page). 

Next I cut up the middle for the doors and used the Wonder Under as a guide to show me where the top of the doors were so that the doors now open. 

Then I fused the barn onto my page making sure to line up the upper window and covering the tan pouch. 

To finish off the barn, I used my template and Wonder Under to cut out the white trim and fuse it to the barn, then I sewed around the edges. 

After the barn was complete, it was time to work on the finger puppets.  I used the template above to cut out the different pieces of the cow, chicken, and pig, then I used some of the same pieces to make the duck and horse.  

I ended up cutting small pieces of Wonder Under for the very tops just to help me keep them in place for when I sewed them together.  I couldn't hold ears, horns, and the fronts and backs of the finger puppets in place and it was just getting too difficult using pins.  This is what the beginning of the cow looked like:

Once I had fused the tops together,  I sewed around the finger puppet, fused on any other pieces and used a pen to make the eyes.