Tutorial looks familiar? A few of my favorite tutorials has made the move from Happy Find and is now residing here. Enjoy!
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Fabric plant pots that is! During a recent visit to an upholstery fabric outlet, I found outdoor fabric and thought how cool it would be to make fabric plant pots. Have you ever seen one? I never have and thought I'd give it a try.
So what you will need is:
-1/4 yard of phifertex (it's basically outdoor fabric used for various things such s furniture, awnings, etc.)
- heavy duty thread (you're working with some seriously thick materials here)
- 1" nylon webbing
- chalkboard cloth (purely optional),but cool to have! You can get it here.
- 1 large can
- some old newspapers to make a pattern
- sharp scissors
- marker or sharpie
- long pins, sewing machine (I used a needle for leather), a lighter (I'll tell you later)
Now before we start, I am by no means a "guru-professional-I make everything perfect" crafter. Believe me, I try! So please be patient and PLEASE... correct me if there's an easier way at any point in my tutorial.
Okie-dokie, with that said, let's get started!
The first thing I did was take a can (I used a small Folger's coffee can) and used it as a template.
I then made a pattern from the can. This is side pattern of our pot. Make sure to give a 1/2" allowance for the seams.
And this one is the bottom pattern of our pot. Now the bottom piece needs to be slightly bigger so that the you have enough allowance when sewing the two pieces together.
Now phifertex is thick stuff, so I recommend you trace the pattern onto the material and cut.
After your cut the side and bottom, cut about 6" of your 1" nylon webbing and chalkboard cloth as well.
For the chalkboard cloth, I wanted to use an oval shape. You can use any shape or size you fancy. TRACE the pattern on the backside of the cloth. DO NOT pin the pattern to this. You don't want to have any holes. It just looks ugly. Cut out your piece and set aside.
So this is what you should have.
Next, take your side piece and lightly fold in half. What you want to do is find the center so that you can sew your chalkboard cloth on.
Like so.
Take you chalkboard cloth and do the same. Take your chalkboard cloth and align both the cloth and the side piece together so that the folded edges match. Sew together.
I used a zig-zag stitch.
Now sew the ends of the side piece together with the "right" side on the inside.
Now take the bottom piece (and this is where it gets a little tricky) and pin it to the side piece. You're pinning two thick pieces, so make sure you have long pins to work with.
Once I have all my pins in place, I flipped the material outward like so
I find that it makes it a little easier to sew.
This is the hard part. Carefully sew the two pieces. Now I had a hard time, being that I wanted it to come out perfect, but sewing a cylinder shape is pretty tricky if you ask me! So I'm open to suggestions to making this part easy!
*PHEW!* Once that part is done, flip it right side out and it should look like this.
Fold over about 3/4" of the top of the pot and set aside.
Take you nylon webbing and lightly "melt" the edges using a lighter to prevent fraying. You want to create a hook or handle to your pot, so pin the nylon webbing to the pot where the seam is.
Sew one side, loop the nylon webbing over and sew the other side. to look like this
To make it more secure, I stitched a rectangle shape and then an "X" inside.
Before you can write on the chalkboard cloth, you need to "cure" it. Just follow the directions given.
WALLAH!!!
You got yourself a dirtbag!!!
The cool thing about this, is that you can use it for a lot of other things, not just for plants. You can design bigger sizes and shapes to use in the shower (like a shower caddy), in the office as a hanging pencil caddy or in your car as a mini trash can. The possibilities are endless!
I used mine as a plant pot. Lily helped me plant basil seeds and look! It's already growing!
Happy crafting!
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