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Posted on January 24, 2020May 12, 2020 by admin

Project of the Month: How to Make a Ribbon Rosette Brooch!

You can obviously adapt this project depending on the width of your ribbon and your desired brooch size, for this project our ribbon is 16mm wide and 1m in length.

Materials:
1m of ribbon – we’ve used tarten to get ready for Burn’s night!
Brooch back
Small – mediem size button
Tools and Equipment:
Thread,
Pins,
Needle
Pair of sharp scissors

1. Have one end of your ribbon in the you hand and be working with the long length. Curve your ribbon in the way shown in the photo, try to have the curve quite pointy as it helps to keep it in shape. Then have your long length meet in the middle but turn it slightly so that it pokes out at a slightly different angle to the first point. This way when you make another point it won’t just keep coming back to the same point. Think of it as your point is 12 on a clock and the two ends are at 4 and 8. It’s quite difficult to explain so please see the photos for this to make more sense =P

2. Keep going round making more ‘points’ till you have a nice full circle – we made 5 but you could keep going and make them longer and have even 10 to make a much larger rosette!

3. Now work round again but making the points much smaller so that they make a mini circle in the bigger circle. It can be quite tricky keeping all of the ribbon in neatly and together at this stage so you could pop a pin in to keep the first circle in the place.

4. When you’re happy with the number of points pop a pin in the keep it all in place and grab your needle and thread. Do several stitches up and down in the middle of the rosette going through ALL of the layers. This should be enough to keep all of the ribbon in the place but you can add a few more stitches to the underneath layers being careful not to catch down any of the loops.

5. Next trim off your excess ribbon and stitch on your button to hide the end of the ribbon. (You can keep using the same piece of thread, you don’t need to knot and cut it off till the end!

6. Now stitch through to the back of the brooch and sew on your brooch back. Several stitches till it’s nice and secure, Knot the thread, trim off the excess and ta-da!

Please let us know how you got on with this project and if you share on social media tag us in with #bunyippotm so we can see them!

Posted on September 6, 2019May 12, 2020 by admin

Project of the Month: How to make a Cutlery Pouch

You will need:
Materials:
x2 Different fabrics 14cm x 62cm
x1 Button between 15 – 20mm
Tools and Equipment:
Sewing Machine,
Thread,
Pins,
Needle,
Fabric Scissors,
Ruler,
Pen / Tailors Chalk,
Iron and Ironing board,
Pinking Shears,
a mug / something with a curve to draw round

You’re find this project very similar to last months Pencil Roll so I’ve you’ve made that one then this should be a breeze, Let’s get Making!

1. Decide which fabric will be your inner and which your outer. For this cutlery pouch the yellow raindrops is the inner and light denim with beetles and bugs the outer – perfect for a picnic right? Cut out of both fabrics one piece 14cm x 37cm, and one piece 14cm x 25cm. To the longer piece curve the edges like in the photo.

2. To make the pouch take the two smaller pieces of fabric, right sides together and stitch along the top – shorter edge of the fabric (1cm seam allowance for this project) Open out and press and then fold so that wrong sides are facing and press the seam down.

3. Next you need to make a little sandwich. Take your inner large piece of fabric right side up. Lay on top the newly sewn pouch with your outer fabric UP. Then finally the outer larger piece face down on top. Pin.

4. Stitch around the edge leaving a 5cm turning gap along one of the straight edges, then trim the corners and curved edges with pinking shears

5. Turn outside out – use a really large knitting needle to help with the corners and press with an iron.
6. Ladder stitch the gap

7. Fold the top flap down and there’s only one step left, make a button hole! You can use the feature on the sewing machine or hand stitch whichever is easiest! I placed the button so when in use it was about 2cm up from the edge of the pouch as shown in the photos. It’s nice to have the flap completely down so that your cutlery can’t poke out when you’re on the go.

And there you have it! Please let us know how you got on with this project and if you share on social media tag us in with #bunyippotm so we can see them!

Posted on August 7, 2019May 12, 2020 by admin

Project of the Month: How to make a Pencil Roll

This month to help get ready for the new school term we’ve done a how to make your own Pencil Roll! Could also be used for paint brushes or even make up brushes!

You will need:

Materials:
X2 Different fabrics 28cm x 39cm
60cm 15mm wide Satin Ribbon

Tools and Equipment:
Sewing Machine, Thread, Pins, Needle, Fabric Scissors, Ruler, Pen / Tailors Chalk,
Iron and Ironing board, Pinking Shears, a mug / something with a curve to draw round

Let’s get Making!

Decide which of your fabrics will be the inner and which will be the outer. For our roll the white animal fabric is the outer and the purple raindrops is the inner. From both of the fabrics cut the following: 28cm x 13cm. 28cm x 26cm (you’ll notice this fits into a fat quarter perfectly so you could actually make the roll out of just one fat quarter is you didn’t want the contrasting fabrics!
Next just with the larger piece of both fabrics grab your mug and butter it up to the top corners, draw around and then cut to give you a nice smooth curve!

Take the two smaller pieces right sides together and stitch along the top (1cm seam allowance for this project) Open out and press and then fold so that wrong sides are facing and press the seam down. This will make up the front pockets.

Take your pocket piece and lay it on top of the larger inner piece of fabric so that bottom corners and lined up. Now grab your pins and a rular, you can use the pins to mark out where you will be stitching to make the multiple pouches or a washable pen / tailors chalk if you prefer. Mark out the pins 3.5cm apart from each – APART from the ones on the other edge, they will need to be 4.5 cm from the edge to allow for seam allowance for when assembling. This perfectly fit 3 pencils per pouch, feel free to change it round to be either smaller or larger depends how many you’d like to fit if each section!

Align your pins for where / how big you’d like your pockets to be

Stitch straight lines down attaching the pouch to the inner piece of fabric. Snip off the loose threads and grab out remaining outer piece of fabric face down (so right sides together) sandwich together and pin around the edge

Sandwich together your pieces, right sides facing

Leave a gap of roughly 7cm along the edge (in between the curves) and sitch around the edge. Snip off the corners, turn and press flat.
Ladder Stitch the top opening.

Place your roll in front of you with so that you’re looking at the back of it. Measure 10cm across from the left hand side and 10cm up from the bottom and pin the centre point of your ribbon to this spot. Stitch the ribbon to the roll but be sure not to stitch all the way through tacking down one of the pouches. I find tucking my finger in one of the pouched so I can feel when the needle is through the fabric and stop it going through the pouches. This should also line up so that this little line of stitching doesn’t show when you turn the roll over as it’s inside on the little pockets.

And Voila! Your roll is complete! Please let us know how you got on with this project and if you share on social media tag us in with #bunyippotm so we can see them!

Posted on April 15, 2019February 22, 2021 by admin

How to Make an Infinity Scarf

Posted on October 3, 2016February 22, 2021 by Lily Otton

How to: Bubble Collar Necklace

These awesome laser cut shapes make the perfect chunky collar necklace, simply because they’re so light! Ideal if you require constant drama in your jewellery but can’t deal with your neck aching at the end of a party (a consistent problem in my life….)

We sell these plastic shapes in cream or black (sadly we’re out of stock of the blue) and these necklaces are wonderfully easy to piece together, providing you have access to the following:

6 Bubble Connectors

42cm of Wide Link Chain (with openable links)

1 Medium Lobster Clasp

Flat Nosed Pliers

First off, use the pliers to open and remove 12 links of the wide chain. We’re going to use these in place of jump rings, as the oval shapes makes them a lot more subtle as connectors. If your chain doesn’t work for this, just use a large jump ring!

Use the links to piece together your connectors in your chosen way so that they all sit beautifully together and flat on your neck. This may take a bit of experimentation, but is worth getting right…

Split the remainder of your chain in half by opening another link.

Attach one piece of chain to either end of your bubbles.

Finally, pop your lobster clasp on one end by – you guessed it – opening up a link, popping it on, and closing it again!

This can obviously be done with any kind of shape you can find, plastic or otherwise, the struggle comes with getting them to sit right. But like I say, worth the effort for such an easy statement piece.

Have fun! x

Posted on August 16, 2016February 23, 2021 by Lily Otton

Piping Cord: A Journey

We’ve only recently started stocking piping cord in the shop, essentially because no one had asked for it until about a month ago. (Top tip: if you want us to stock something, just ask! We like knowing what we’re missing).

I’ve fancied having a play with it ever since, and have been noticing more and more people making piped cushion covers lately. Having just moved house, my current pillows are looking really sad in my new room so I thought this was a perf opportunity to try it out – which is why this is a much bigger pillow size than I normally would make!

Note: I don’t think I’ve ever actually used piping before, though I do remember doing homework about it in GCSE textiles amazingly. This was vaguely tricky, (probably on the same level of pom pom cushions, which we all know are life) but if you’re willing to give it a go and it not be 100% perfect then go for it! I basically mashed mine though the sewing machine and it came out pretty good, if I say so myself. (I’ve written this before I’ve actually taken it home and seen if it fits the cushion, so might not be so pleased with myself later.)

Before I started I read through this tutorial, and used it to work out my measurements etc.

You will need:

Front fabric (equals the size of your cushion, plus 1.25cm on the height & width)

Back fabric (the length of your cushion, plus 18cm on the width, cut in half to make two rectangles)

Piping Cord (I used size 4, and you need enough to go around the entire edge of your cushion, plus a touch extra for safety)

Bias Binding (you can make this yourself, if you’re a better person than I am. You need the same amount as the piping cord….)

Sewing Machine, unless you really really love to hand sew

Scissors, Pins, Iron

First things first, fold down one of the long edges on your back fabric 1cm, then 1cm again, hiding the raw edge. Press into place with an iron, and pin into place if you need to. (Reasons you might need to: you didn’t actually iron it, like me).

Stitch down with your sewing machine, and repeat on the other piece of back fabric.

Now the piping fun begins.

Starting about 5cm from the top of the binding, lay your piping along the middle of your bias, wrap the binding around it and pin together. I started doing this, decided it was too thin and went back and opened the binding out before pinning it. I have no idea if that was the right thing to do or not, but it seemed to work out ok.

You binding should have wrong sides touching

This is a representation of how my brain felt during this

Now, sew this together, but don’t sew the 5cm you left at one end.

This was where I started to get in a faff, because I realised that the foot on the machine would stop me getting that close to the piping. So I stitched it down, but quite near the edge.

Now, what the other tutorial I read said to do next was to pin this around the edges of your front piece (piping facing inwards) and stitch it into place, clipping your corners as you go to get it to sit better.

I obviously ignored this, and decided that I knew better and that I should just skip right to the end. THIS WAS AN ERROR. Do not do this. It was really difficult and the piping kept moving around all the time and the corners were super hard.

At the point where your two ends of piping meet, you’ll hopefully have a little bit extra. Trim the piping so it meets perfectly, and then tuck the 5cm end of binding over the other end, meaning you’ll have two layers of bias binding over a small section of piping.

So hopefully if you have taken my advice you now have a beautifully attached piece of piping cord to the front piece of your cushion, in which case all you need to do now is lay your 2 back pieces face down, overlapping in the middle.

I don’t, so what I’m doing here is laying the piping cord around the edge of the right side of the front piece, then laying the two back bits face down so they overlap in the middle, and the pinning this all into place. Sigh, hindsight…

All you have to do now is sew around the outside of the cushion. I used my zipper foot instead of the standard one so that I could get a bit closer to the piping cord, because I didn’t want it to be weird and gappy.

Once you’ve done that, flip it right side round, clip the corners and give it a good press with the iron. And that’s it!

Update: through some sewing miracle, it fit my cushion! Woop woop. Now I just have to make 2 more matching ones…

I’d love to hear if you’ve given this a go – let me know!

Don’t forget to befriend us on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram for nice photos and shop updates…

Posted on July 25, 2016March 26, 2026 by Lily Otton

How to: Drop Earrings

Earring making is one of the most useful and gratifying forms of jewellery making, and once you’ve mastered the basic techniques you can whip up all sorts of beautiful designs mega quickly! Below you’ll find a tutorial to make some lovely & simple drop earrings, that require basic earring making skills (I’ll do my best to describe these below!).

You will need: 4 x drop flower beads, 4 x headpins, 2 x earring hooks, 2 x jump rings, flat nose pliers, round nose pliers. wire cutters.

First of all, pop one of your beads on to one of your headpins. Use your wire cutters to trim a little bit of excess off the headpin – how much is up to you!

Using your round nose pliers, pinch the wire about 1cm down from the top, and bend to the side to it’s sitting at a 90 degree angle. Then, using the same pliers, grab the wire right at the end and turn over to make a loop. Repeat on the other pin.

Use your flat nose pliers to open up one of your jump rings, pop both of your dangles on, and close again.

Now use the same pliers to open up the bottom of one earring hook, pop the jump ring on, and close. Repeat for your second earring, and voila! All done.

You can make a huge array of lovely earring designs using only this technique – time to get practising those loops!

Posted on June 25, 2016July 4, 2016 by Lily Otton

How to: Vintage Leaf Festival Hair Crown

How to: Vintage Leaf Festival Crown

Mattie came up with this design while trying to think of new and pretty ways to use our special leaf shaped beads that we obtained in a big haul of vintage stock a few years ago. As with all good ideas, this one involved a crown. Follow our instructions below to make your own beaded crown, sturdy enough to survive the entirety of festival season…

You will need: 0.6mm wire, vintage leaf beads, vintage pearl beads, 50cm ribbon. This can be done with any beads and ribbon of your choice – as long as their not too heavy to adorn your head all day! We use 0.6mm wire here because it was the thickest we could fit through our leaf beads, but 0.8mm is also great and a bit sturdier (if you can fit it through!)

1. Cut yourself a piece of wire 1 metre long.

2. Start threading your beads on – we threaded two leaves, followed by a pearl, and repeated this pattern.

3. Once it looks like it’s getting long enough, check it around your head for length. It should sit comfortably on your head like a crown, not fall down and into your eyes.

4. Where the two ends meet, wrap the wire around each other nice and neatly, and then trim down with a wire cutter so they’re not poking out.

5. Tie your piece of ribbon so it covers up your wire wrap.

6. Voila! Wear all day like a festival queen.

If you fancy giving this a go we’ve put together everything you need in a kit – and with 3 colours to choose from! Check it out by clicking here.