Selvedge project

Recently, in a fit of inspiration, I decided to have a stab at a selvedge fabric. After stumbling across the blog of the fabulous Ric Rac and her selvedge frock project while trawling "the great time waster", I knew I had to start collecting for my own project! Visit my website to see more photos and details of this project.

Obviously this meant my mum doing the "collecting" as she uses far more fabric than me (quilting has that effect!) so I had to wait a little while. The collection arrived and to be honest I forgot all about it... oops! Until a couple of weeks ago when I found and sorted it. I found that there was a good number of pieces in shades of white and cream so decided that was the time to give it a go!

I trimmed and arranged the strips, maintaining the mixture of widths for added interest. The loose edges were sewn together (pieces pinned right-side-together and sewn on the machine - quilting style) and then pinned to backing fabric. Using a zigzag stitch the selvedges were sewn down and together to form a continuous piece of fabric.

The overall effect was pleasing and made a piece of fabric roughly 16 x 17in.

Now, what would you do with a piece of fabric that size? There are, of course, dozens of possibilities: all different and all interesting. For me it had to be a bear - that wasn't a difficult decision! What was more of a challenge was deciding on the style, size, shape. Having made that decision I set about tracing patterns, cutting fabric and sewing pieces together.

As this was a small bear it didn't take long to complete the sewing so I was able to move on to stuffing, adding features, jointing and finishing.

The bear now has black glass eyes, an embroidered nose to match his paw pads and a white ribbon with gold snowflake design.

You can really see the variation in fabrics from the side.

And in this photo you can see the light on the bears head picking up the subtle patterns in the fabric.

I am so pleased with the results of the experiment and would definitely repeat the process once "I" have collected more selvedge! Enough for a larger bear would be nice...