Frugal Fabric Fridays: Christmas Special #2

This week I’d like to share a couple of No Sew ideas.

1.       Fabric Decoupage Baubles

For this you need some old baubles in a redundant colour scheme, lightweight but opaque fabric and PVA glue. The first time I tried this I used scraps of upholstery fabric and that was rather unsuccessful. I had much better results with scraps of polyester satin, and the purple colour is quite festive.

The approach is fairly simple. Cut the scraps into small pieces (no larger than 1”), apply glue onto the bauble with a brush and lay the fabric onto the bauble. Add extra glue under the overlapping corners. You can do the top half of the bauble, allow to dry, then turn over and do the bottom half.  Fill any gaps with another piece of fabric. You can then coat with diluted PVA or spray varnish to seal.

2.       Fleece Mantel Scarf

This doesn’t truly use scraps, since my source fabric is a red ‘Polarvide’ fleece throw from Ikea. The design is very simple and uses the existing scalloped edge on the blanket.

Measure the depth of your mantel from the wall to the edge, and then how much of the scarf you want to hang down at the front.

I have a strange mantel in my rented house which is very wide, so I have had to use both ends of the blanket in order to have a long enough scarf. A machine sewn seam is likely to look ugly, so a few stitches holding the two sides together is enough. You can make a neat corner if you wish to exactly fit your mantel, but leaving the edges free is simpler.