Quilted Hot Water Bottle Covers

Spotty things are 'in' at the moment and I found a bundle of spotty fat quarters in various different colours and just had to have it.

I then found some instructions on how to make quilted hot water bottle covers and decided that the spotty material would make great covers. So I set to work......

Here is the first one I made in blue:

They all have a contrasting handmade binding on the back, with the same colour material used inside. Once I got the hang of it, they are very easy to do.

I created a template on a large piece of card for the three pieces. I then pinned these pieces to the spotty material and cut around the edge.

Then I used a white gel marker (which washes off afterwards with a damp cloth) and a ruler to mark out the lines for sewing. I thought the diagonal quilting would add a quirky touch.

Once the lines had been ruled I then laid each piece onto some wadding a cut around with a 3cm excess around all sides. I then laid this onto a piece of co-ordinating coloured material and cut this to the same size as the wadding.

Then I used the sewing machine to sew the quilted lines. I then trimmed each piece down to the size of the spotty material.

The edging was made using a strip of the co-ordinating material, folding each side into the middle and pressing, then folding it around the edge and sewing in place.

Once this was done, all three pieces were assembled with right sides facing and sewn together. They were then turned into the right way and pressed. The white lines were removed using a damp cloth.

So far I have made three, with a fourth, light blue cover almost ready. I still have another 13 different colours to go so there are plenty more in the making.

Handmade Books

About a year ago I went on a day long course that taught us how to make Japanese stab bound books. Since then I have had a go at making a few of them and my Mum even commissioned me to make one for a friend.

This book was started at the craft day and completed later on with some flower embelishments and some beads. The binding used on this book is the simplest of the techniques we were shown and more intricate ones can be made using more holes. Also different threads can be used too and a sewing machine can even be involved as it was in the next one:

I twisted several threads together and then ran them through a sewing machine to bind them together. If you use a zig zag stitch it binds the threads together to make a sort of plait which looks very effective. The ends can then be teased out to give a fraying look.

On this book as well, instead of being able to see the edge of the pages I used a piece of blue material to edge the book which gives it a much more professional feel:

These books are great because they can be made into any size you like and can be used for anything - scrapbooking and picture albums, writing down precious notes or even can be made to be a phone book with the tabs being cut out into all the pages for the alphabet. They are really easy to make too!