Embellish Using Pipe Cleaner Designs

I love to embellish. I really love to raise the surface of a piece, meaning that it's no longer just flat, I add an element of three-dimensionality to it. And I had this little piece left over from a larger piece and I thought, you know, could I put that on an eight by eight frame and turn it into something, and if so, what can I do to it? So the first thing I thought was to really highlight the circles on it by putting in a stuffed, raised spiral, and so I turned to my handy dandy friend, the pipe cleaner. Some people call these chenille stems, depending on where you buy them. If they're pretty colors, they're usually a chenille stem, if they're white, they're usually a pipe cleaner. And they can do all sorts of magical things. I also like to use them as the bases or beginning of a piece of jewelry. So this can become a pin, I will bead it and then put a pin back on it. Or I can use this as an applique, I can applique it on, which would be very, very cool. The nice thing is is that basically, what I've got is a stem or a stick, if you will, that is stiff, and when I bend it, it holds its shape, so, you can't get that from rattail. Having that chenille stem inside is what gives me that ability to hold a shape. These are very easy to make, and again, they just have so many wonderful uses. So let me show you how I do it, and the little trick that I use to get the turning going without having to have any type of turning tool. So, for regular chenille stems that are this regular size, I think you can buy jumbo ones, so if they say jumbo, you're probably gonna have to increase the width of your strips. I cut my strips one and a quarter inches. If my fabric is very, very thick like this fabric here, then I cut it one and a half inches. But one and a quarter is plenty, and if you want it to be really tight, like this one, I wanted it to be tight, and I wanted to try one and an eighth inch. It was a little harder to turn, but once I turned it, you know, I liked the tightness of it. So anywhere from an eighth, one and an eighth, to one and a half, depending on the thickness of your fabric. So I'm gonna take this strip and I'm gonna fold it right sides together if it has right sides, mine doesn't. And I'm gonna sew with a quarter inch seam allowance. I have also decreased the size of my stitch length so it's quite small so that this isn't going to poke through when I'm trying to turn it. Okay, now here's the trick. I'm gonna take my chenille stem and I'm gonna insert it in the end, but first I'm gonna turn it over so that it has a soft tip instead of the rough metal, and I'm gonna insert it inside the tube about an inch or so, and them I'm gonna stitch it in place. I'm gonna go back and forth several times, because it's only got little thin wires in there and I wanna make sure I catch that wire. So this is a loss, this portion down here at the bottom. I can't use that portion, but it's what's holding the chenille stem inside this tube. And I'm gonna use that chenille stem now to turn the tube and the chenille stem will be inside. So I'm simply going to bunch that up, and the hardest part is to get over that first hump. I use a pair of pliers, these are just jewelry making pliers, and I kind of pull that tube up over that hump with those pliers. You could use any type of apparatus like a pair of tweezers if you don't have pliers, you could use a pair of pliers from your toolbox if they're clean, but that first portion of getting that over that hump is the hardest part. But once that's done, you're golden. Okay, push that up there. And this is silk, so it's a loosely woven silk, it wants to kind of fray as I'm doing this. Okay, so once that's done, now I just scoot that down, and I keep pushing this up onto the chenille stem, and pushing it over. So not only am I turning my tube, but at the same time I'm getting my chenille stem inside my tube. This is television watching technique, 'cause I'll sew a bunch of these and then I'll go sit in front of a movie and turn them all. And there I have my chenille tube inside my turned tube, and I'm ready to use it for whatever embellishment I want to use it for. Isn't that cool? So, I can twist this into a spiral, which is one of my favorite things to do, and it will stay in shape. So I twist it into a tight spiral and then as I let go, it will move into a looser one, and I can use that as an embellishment. I always go back in, 'cause as you move it around, some of the chenille comes out, clip that little bit out, then I can applique that in place. Another really fun thing to do is to put it here at angles that change in their length. Short angles, longer angles, like so, and use that as an embellishment. So you can use these things to raise the surface of your quilts, you can use them on garments, they look amazing on jackets, they have a finished edge so they're totally launderable. You can satin stitch or zigzag stitch them on, not satin stitch, but zigzag stitch them on by machine instead of using them by hand. You can do it with a contrasting thread so you have the threads going over. It's just kind of endless what you can do with these wonderful turned tubes.