Wednesday 2 February 2011

THE SOFT BOX

I made this soft box for Angela a while ago and it seemed to catch your eye.


I have made another and hope you can follow the way I made it, there is not a lot to it really, so here we go...

First you need to make four Postcards -  6" x 4"
you can make them whatever size you like actually but I like to make Postcards so.....
They are NOT using the pelmet vilene inside so as to be soft...
 You also need two ends, 4" square, again no PV...
 I haven't put the instructions for making these as you can see from previous posts how I make the cards, just leave out the stiffener folks...
Lay all six pieces out like this...
 Then I use monofilament thread and butting the edges together, I put the machine onto the widest zigzag possible and stitch the pieces together. Basically that is it really, I told you it was easy peasy didn't I! OK it is a bit fiddly getting the bits together, you could do it by hand of course, but you know me, under the machine it goes everytime. Here is the finished soft box...
 inside view for you...
 inside are the postcards made with the voile, they fit perfectly...
another job done.
YESSSSS
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HOW I MADE THE VOILE CARD

This was the Postcard I sent to Tessa, she wanted to know how I made it. So here you are folks, a 'not-so-mini' tutorial on how I made it.

 The first thing you need are lots of tiny bits of fabric, I have bags of these in all sorts of colours, I do try to keep them seperat you never know  which colour you are going to need at any time...
 These have all been cut from left over tiny scraps from various projects, batik fabrics give you wonderful scraps as the colour is the same both sides - almost...
 I also give the small voile scraps the same treatment, but they all go in one bag, I only have so much space!!!
 So, find yourself a base, these are cards I was going to make for something, I can't remember what now, so I decided to use them for this purpose, see anything is usable, even that brown one with the scribbled thread on it...
 I will start with this, you can see it has a cocktail glass stitched on it, don't worry you wont see that much longer...
 See, I have literally tipped a pile of lilac scraps onto it, along with some voile bits too, there are rather a lot on here, I don't normally use this many as it makes it very thick to sew through, but I wanted to be sure to cover the stitching...
 I then 'audition' different coloured voiles, placed on top of the scraps, they tone down straight away as you can see...

 OK, onto the next one, same thing, tip a pile of the bits on, different colours now...
 Voile...
 and another...
 Now this voile has some stitching already on it, a flower or some swirls. Which to use?

 This card has been sitting in my drawer of prepped cards ready for me to do something with for ages, so here we go, it is going to get the voile treatment. You will see what I did with it later...
 Once you have decided on the voile you are going to use, stitch as close round the edge as possible to enclose all those bits, trim off any that poke out of the edges, there are always a few stray bits...
Just beneath this Happy Birthday card is the pink striped one, you can just see the stripes...
 I did this to show you how mistakes can be made and then rectified. I placed a piece of gorgeous sparkly voile on this card, stitched round the edges but found it was just a tad short of the edge so all the squares could fall out. So......
 this one did the same when I wasn't looking!!!!
 Solution -
Place a piece of sparkly NET over the top and stitch round the edge as before. Of course you could just cut the voile off, but what a waste that would be...
 The cards are all ready for their fancy stitching now - IF you wish to do it of course, you could just leave them as is, but the bits inside would move and peeps would see you have used reject cards, hahahaha...
Here is that pink stripey one with it's fancy top stitching done...
 I just went round the butterfly on this one and then left it alone...
 These are two of the BACKS of the Postcards, plain fabric not too dark so you will be able to write whatever on there...
 Following are all the cards finished with their edges done, I am not going into that as I have all that information earlier on this blog with the other Postcards...
 I didn't make two, I have pictured them using a different background so you can see how important this can be to show your work to it's best advantage...
 All done, ready for the post, what do you think, easy or what!

Whilst I was making those I found this little Gingko card which needed it's edges done, so I finished that off too.
I hope it is all clear for you and that you will make some pretty 'voiled' Postcards.
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