An Experiment

The cuffs I have in mind to make for my daughter and me made me wonder just how I'd go about it, so I thought I'd experiment a little. I cut the ribbed cuff off of one of the pink sweater sleeves, and blanket stitched around the edges. Then I went and played in my fabric scraps.

It's not as heavily embellished as some of the examples I found online and loved, but it's a nice first attempt at this.

The disc is a Japanese postage stamp, with a circle of a page in Japanese (I think), sandwiched in fused plastic. That was sort of hit-and-miss. It was trickier than it seemed it might be.

I used ribbon and a button for my toggle/clasp, and stitched more buttons and beads to it.

The bow in the last picture was my first try at laminated felting. I used a rectangular scrap of lace and felted variegated purple wool onto it. It didn't quite work out as I'd hoped, so I pinched the middle and tied ribbon around it to make a bow.

I did the blanket stitching and the felted lace piece while watching tv last night, and that didn't take any time at all. I did the embellishing all this morning. Everything was stuff I had on hand already, so it also went quickly.

Mother/Daughter Cuffs

Yesterday, I was able to talk my parents into a trip to Antiques on East State in Rockford. Mom had been there with me before, but we'd never dragged Daddy along. (I didn't want to leave him at home alone, while my husband and daughter went to the mall on their weekly "date.")

There, I found this:

and I knew immediately what I wanted to do with it. I would disassemble it (easily done, since it's on elastic) and use the pieces to embellish the pink felted sweater cuff I want to make for my daughter for xmas. When I saw that some of the charms were mom-related, it felt like I should make a pair of them, not necessarily matching, but using the same components on both. Not sure how I'm going to make that work, since the image in my head is pretty nebulous... but I have almost 2 months, right??

UPDATE:
Yes, I had 2 months, but I was finishing them up just days before xmas, making my own cuff last. I foolishly neglected to get photos of all three together. Oops... Here's mine (top) and my daughter's:

Mom's is actually more of a bangle. She has a wool allergy, and since there is wool in the felted sweater -- it's cashmere blend, I was afraid it would irritate her skin. I found a wire cuff form at JoAnn's (made by Darice), sewed the material to that, and then lined the inside to minimize the amount of wool that would touch skin. Other than the form it took, all three bracelets are embellished with the same components, with added touches to make each one unique. I used the "Best Mom" charm (upper right in the top photo) on my mother's bracelet.

Currently the only photo I have of Mom's. You can kinda see it!