Party Favour Jars
Don’t you love an excuse to make up some party favours? Well my daughter Annelies is turning 8 next week and she is having a sleepover in the chicken shed with some friends (no chickens!). It was named the chicken shed as we were doing it up for the chickens but it turned out too good so we converted it for the kids instead! Thats a blog in itself for another day!
Well here is what we made this evening before bedtime, until we ran out of jars and sweets! Might have eaten a few along the way! (The idea actually came from one of my sewing students Sharon who loves a bit of chintz!)
I want to show you how to make a scalloped edge on your sewing machine. Hopefully your machine will have a setting which resembles mine. I know most of the new Singer, Janome, older Elna’s and Bernina machines have this function. Perhaps it is one of those stitches you never used or even realised your machine could do!
We played around with the stitch length and width and settled for 6 width and 0.6 length. After cutting out a circle on your fabric, as demonstrated by Annelies, use the edge of the foot with the edge of your fabric as a guide and then sew all the way around. Using some sharp very pointy scizzors trim away the excess from your scalloped edge and place on top of an old jar with an elastic, then cover with a ribbon. Careful not to cut through your stitches.
We raided my ribbons box and used old pieces of upholstery trimming and laces from the pound shop. Using a straight stitch just attach the ribbons or lace near the edge, demonstrated by Sam. Once attached you can trim off any excess fabric from underneath if required.
Earlier in the day I made some cherry jam for the first time (if anyone knows an easy way to remove cherry stones please let me know!), so mine went in a Kilner jar, with a lovely jar cover made by my sewing student Sharon O’Connor.
For your inspiration I have included some other images of jam jar covers that I found on my favourite site Pinterest. Next time I am going to try embroidering them first on my embroidery machine!
I would love to hear from you if you have any other ideas or if you give it a go yourself.
Dotty Bobbin x
TIP: if you are struggling to remove the sticky label residue on the jars, try using a cotton pad and nail polish remover – worked for me!