Recycling Art

I lost my sunglass case last week, so I considered buying a new one. Then I remembered this little art embroidery piece I made last year. It was one of those magazine projects I try out now and then -- and was just about the perfect size for a quilted case.

I trimmed off the bottom of the piece to get it to the right size, and then grabbed some complimentary fabric and batting from my scraps stash.

I handstitched a little quilt out of that, which reminded me of why I didn't care for this project -- the fusible web holding the fabric together made it hard to get my needle through it (same thing happened when I originally embroidered it.) On the plus side, it made it very stiff and sturdy, which worked nicely for my case.

I turned it outside in and sewed up everything but one end to finish the case. I liked the end result a lot.

Thrifty/easy alternative: find a nice-sized quilted pot holder that is a rectangle shape, fold it in half long ways, and stitch together. If it's already bound you don't even have to stitch and turn it, you can just run a stitch along the inner seam of the binding.

As for the piece I trimmed, I'll make that into a bookmark.