artisticphantom
06-09-2005, 01:11 PM
looking for something to jazz up a belt or pant leg?
does you child or yourself use those stretchy book covers for school/ etc...?
i discovered( sort-of) that after a year of hard useage, my fabric book covers are full of holes, and the backs ( at least) are covered in dirt from my books sitting on the floor. i recently got out of school for summer, and realized i needed something to wear with my groovy clothing. so i got the idea to recycle the book covers. i had one which my frend gave me ( it was tye-dyed) and another which i personally owned, ( this was plain white). what you do is cut the seems for the parts that go over the front and back covers of the book( str8 stiched [white] cover worked best, not diagonally stitched [tye-dyed] cover).now, i forgot this step , before you cut the stitches you may want to tye- dye a plain white cover with red, green and blue food coloring mixed with hot water. this will turn it a very nice pink, and the other colors will sort of rinse away with cool water. let the cover dry if you have dyed it. then cut it into six thin strips leaving as little of unused fabric as possible. gather three strips and ti ends with one big square knot. then braid( french or otherwise). if you wish, you may put beads onto the strips before braiding. careful, some choise words are liable to slip while doing this. tie the three remaining strips to each individual end of the strips youve started with. this will give a raggy effect to your creation. after doing this you could either keep braiding for a nice belt or a necklace for a child( will not break because of elastic within fabric), or you may wish to tear most of the braids out like i did and tie it off somewhere near to the top. you will definitely want to finsh off the bottoms of your strings. i put two different colored beads at the bottms of my strings and looped the strings bak up through the top most bead of the two, then tied off the individual strands with a double square knot above the top beads. this keeps the fabric from dragging on the ground. reply here if you'v tried and liked this idea or if you have discovered ways it can be improved. thx
does you child or yourself use those stretchy book covers for school/ etc...?
i discovered( sort-of) that after a year of hard useage, my fabric book covers are full of holes, and the backs ( at least) are covered in dirt from my books sitting on the floor. i recently got out of school for summer, and realized i needed something to wear with my groovy clothing. so i got the idea to recycle the book covers. i had one which my frend gave me ( it was tye-dyed) and another which i personally owned, ( this was plain white). what you do is cut the seems for the parts that go over the front and back covers of the book( str8 stiched [white] cover worked best, not diagonally stitched [tye-dyed] cover).now, i forgot this step , before you cut the stitches you may want to tye- dye a plain white cover with red, green and blue food coloring mixed with hot water. this will turn it a very nice pink, and the other colors will sort of rinse away with cool water. let the cover dry if you have dyed it. then cut it into six thin strips leaving as little of unused fabric as possible. gather three strips and ti ends with one big square knot. then braid( french or otherwise). if you wish, you may put beads onto the strips before braiding. careful, some choise words are liable to slip while doing this. tie the three remaining strips to each individual end of the strips youve started with. this will give a raggy effect to your creation. after doing this you could either keep braiding for a nice belt or a necklace for a child( will not break because of elastic within fabric), or you may wish to tear most of the braids out like i did and tie it off somewhere near to the top. you will definitely want to finsh off the bottoms of your strings. i put two different colored beads at the bottms of my strings and looped the strings bak up through the top most bead of the two, then tied off the individual strands with a double square knot above the top beads. this keeps the fabric from dragging on the ground. reply here if you'v tried and liked this idea or if you have discovered ways it can be improved. thx