Hi all from Maddi and Trish!!! With two ideas for wall hangings to decorate your home.
Hello from MadDi:
I can't believe I was lucky enough to be given these beautiful pieces of patchwork when a wonderful and prolific South African crafter, my darling son in law's mother Undine, passed away. I wanted to use them for something special but they were all so completely different.
As they say in South Africa "a Boer maak a plan" (A farmer makes a plan) so make a plan I did!
This is what I did (Sorry I have not given you detailed measurements cos you may have different stuff!):
- I started by selecting 6 patchwork squares and trimming them just a little.
- I then backed each patch with a piece of fabric pinning right sides together, stitching almost all the way around turning them inside out and finally pinning the gap.
- I then choose a piece of fabric for the backing and hemmed it all the way around.I choose seed cloth which is really CHEAP and GORGEOUS to work with (a remnant from my mum).
- Then I made some some tab top loops and attached them to the back of the top of the seed cloth.
- I attached my patchwork pieces - top stitching them to the piece of seed cloth.
- Finally I decorated with whatever embellishments (FABRIC) I could find.
- And we are done!
These are tab tops ready to be attached:
Before I stitched everything down, I laid everything on the floor and played around a bit with extra fabric. My mum loved poppies and cornflowers so they were added to the wall hanging. Woo Hoo when I had so many colours what difference does a few more make.
Finally I added some crochet hexagons, hearts and buttons!
MadDi's Tips:
- Make sure the tabs are of equal length when you attach them or else your wall hanging will not hang properly!
- My mother taught me (and she was ALWAYS right - as mothers normally are) "use an iron when you are sewing and press before you stitch and after!" Yes I do!!
- Be Creative!!!
- Use your stash!!!!
- You could also use this as a curtain!
Hi from Trish, my wall hanging is only a tiny little thing, but it is hanging in my hallway to welcome visitors to our home, its made using 2 squares of felt, a sample of Cath Kidston fabric, a few buttons, a small piece of ribbon, some wadding and embroidery thread, I had all except the felt at home already, so only a very small cost to make this.
I used pinking shears to zig zag the edges of the felt, then cut the middle out of the top piece (slightly smaller than the floral fabric. I placed the wadding on top of the 2 pieces of felt then used bondaweb on the back of the floral fabric to get it to stay in place until the end when I stitched it. I embroidered 'WELCOME' on the small bit of felt, then trimmed it a little to fit better and using the same thread attatched it to the floral fabric.
Then I put all the pieces together, stitched the buttons on using 2 strands each of pink and pale green thread before I stitched the crosses at the edge of the floral fabric and running stitch all round the edge to hold it all together.
A quick and easy make that took a couple of hours from start to finish.
Trish xxx
Thank you all for visiting us at IACW. I hope we have inspired you to use some of that stash to decorate your home...
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