Fabric (paper type) Advent chain

Welcome Sew, Mama, Sew! Readers! I am terribly excited to find my way onto such a great site. I am amazed at the talent and so glad to have a place for inspiration. Welcome, welcome, welcome!! Poke around a little because I do have more sewing and quilting projects.

I have been thinking about this for a few years now. I love making those paper chain countdowns with pretty papers. Scrapbook papers are getting better and better. Last year I played a lot with making decorations with awesome scrapbook papers with amazing textures in them etc. I have been thinking how fun it would be to make a chain countdown with fabric. Yes, fabric!

But I almost stopped myself because I know lots of you will grumble and say you don't even know how to thread a needle. I try to be mindful of that. But my mind tends to think in fabric. What I came up with was a low-sew idea that can be no sew if you must.
You will need:
-4 or more coordinating fabrics
-fusible webbing
-Velcro

That is it. If you are doing low-sew you need sewable webbing and Velcro . If you are doing totally no-sew you want non-sew webbing and iron on Velcro. We live in AZ and store our decorations in the hot garage or attic. Anything just ironed on will get slimy and not stick. So I always use the sewable webbing and Velcro. But YMMV.

1. I did a rough cut of two fabrics as well as webbing. Then, using the webbing I ironed two of the coordinating fabrics together.

This is the stuff I'm using.

2. Repeat step 1 with two different coordinating fabrics.

3. Cut your now double sided fabric into strips. I made mine about 1" wide and 8" long. You will need 24 total double sided strips. I used my pinking shears to cut the edges. Since this is low and no sew, the pinked edges will not fray too much. (The green striped fabric is what is on the red with white polka-dot strips.)

4. Sew (or iron on) small pieces of Velcro to each end. You want one piece of Velcro to be on the end of one side of the strip and the other piece of Velcro to be on the opposite side of the strip. This needs to form a circle. (See how the end of the green side has the rough Velcro and the end of the red side has the soft Velcro?)

5. Repeat this until all of your strips have Velcro on each end.

Hang it up and use it just as you would use a paper chain. But instead of tearing off a link, you undo one. And the best part is you can use this year after year! I made this one for my mom.

Remember, this is part of a whole week of advent calendars. Be sure to check out #1 which is a magnetic tin advent , #2 which is a framed button ornament advent, #3 which is a fabric candy or activity advent, and#5 is an embellished felt ornament and fabric advent!

Anjeanette

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