I am currently getting ready for Sewjourn – patterns cut out and placed into a box waiting to be sewn, boxes with notions being put together, and dreaming of sewing/chatting/laughing.  But I’m also getting ready for Christmas!  Yes, it’s November, and I know that many of you don’t even want to THINK about Christmas yet.  But it will get here, my diary is filling up, so I want to be on top of things – maybe even ahead of things!  I’m well on my way through shopping for family, and last weekend I managed to get a whole lot of teacher and friend gifts out of the way.

Fabric necklaces! Each of these is made from a tube of fabric, with wooden beads pushed inside and knots between each bead. Then the ends are simply tied together.

It was fun going through my stash and finding suitable fabrics. Fine lawn and voile worked best, as they tied the smallest knots between the beads. You just measure the circumference of the bead, then cut out a strip as wide as the circumference PLUS half an inch to allow for the seam allowance (I sewed 1/4 inch seam allowance) when sewing the strip into a tube. You absolute need the full width of the fabric for your strip to get a long enough necklace – actually, even longer tubes (cut lengthwise instead of crosswise) would have been better.

I bought the beads on eBay (150 beads for $12.50 or similar), after searching for “wood spacer beads”. The larger ones are 1″ diameter beads, and the smaller ones 3/4″ diameter. I prefer the look of the necklaces made from the larger beads. And a couple of these have made it into my cupboard rather than into the present stash, I must admit.  They provide such a fun pop of colour!