My day #5

The end of the school year is approaching fast. I don’t have any inspiration, so I started to make magnets with some fabric scraps we have gathered this year.

I hope to get some inspiration soon, so we can give something else again to our kids coaches and teachers, besides a tiny magnet.

Family schedule

In order to be able to properly organize our family life we painted a magnetic chalkboard for the kitchen.

Every Saturday we write down the weekly activities as well as the menu for the coming week.

On top of that there is place for groceries. If someone finishes the last banana or uses the last bit of soap in the dispenser he/she has to find the corresponding magnet and put it on the board, to avoid stock problems.

We made the magnets ourselves. Some natural color cotton fabric was decorated with pastel blue lines and a vertical pink line just like ruled paper. The idea of ruled paper comes from here and here.

So the festive garland you saw here was converted into a set of kitchen magnets.

Our weekly calendar starts on a Sunday, which is not a mistake or a creative suggestion. Our week really starts on Sunday as the weekend is Fridays and Saturdays. We have to get used to over and over again every time we come back from Belgium.

Fabric scraps

Sadly enough my broken collar bone still does not allow me to handle big pieces of fabric. So besides a number of eleventh-hour pencil cases and Louka her crow costume, I did not really cut, let alone stitch anything noteworthy the last couple of weeks. The advantage: my workspace is as tidy as can be and ready for our summer break.

This spring-cleaning revealed some fabric scraps that are really worthwhile doing something with –I hardly ever throw anything away- and luckily I can handle small scraps even with an immobilized arm.

I preferably make magnets with them and exceptionally buttons.

Buttons I prefer less as the kids hurt themselves with them and as they tend to get lost when they get removed from the garment for washing.

There are 4 different ways to make nice magnets; but in any case you need a button machine.

Canvas kind of fabrics you can transform into a magnet just by cutting a perfect round and placing in the button maker.

Thinner fabrics you will need to do an extra step as otherwise you risk the fabric to come of the metal part of the magnet or the fabric might tear while making the magnet.

Thinner fabrics you can cover with a lamination sheet -usually delivered with the magnet parts- I never do this as the nice textured effect of the fabric gets lost.

Another solution is to strengthen the fabric at the front side with iron-on-vinyl; resulting in a vinyl version of the initial fabric. A nice but expensive solution if you ask me.

Alternate you can iron fusible interfacing on the back of your fabric scrap, this is not very expensive and I also always have small leftover pieces I consequently can get rid of.

These two last methods guarantee that the fabric does not tear and makes it a lot easier to cut the circles.

This is how these 2 piles of nicely cut rounds were transformed in a whole collection of magnets.

And now… what with the fabric scraps after cutting out the rounds? I will tell you that another time.