I decided to turn the small elephant into a Mason jar to fill up with candy for one of Adrienne’s preschool teachers. Having never done this before, I had to kind of play it by ear. Here is how I did it, although there are probably many other ways it can be done.
First, assemble your supplies: the finished stitching, a Mason jar with lid and ring, scissors, fiberfill stuffing, a pencil, Elmer’s glue, and a hot glue gun.
Center the ring over your stitching to make sure that it fits. As you can see from the photo, my elephant just barely fit inside. Using the pencil, lightly trace around the outside of the jar ring. Cut out your stitched piece, cutting on the pencil mark.
Use the jar lid (not the ring) as a template to cut out several circles of fiberfill. Glue the fiberfill circles to the top of the lid. Elmer’s glue will probably work better for this than the glue gun. The more fiberfill, the puffier the end result. Of course, you can skip this step altogether if you want your stitching to be flat against the lid.
Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of this next part. Put your cross stitched circle into the ring and make sure that it is centered. Put the fiberfill/lid inside the ring so that it rests on the stitching. Look at it from the right side – the design should be centered and the fiberfill should make it puff up. When you are happy with it, take the pieces out. If your circle of fabric is too large and and the edges are not laying flat in the ring, trim off the edges slightly. Spread hot glue all around the inside of the jar ring and press the stitched piece onto it. You will have to work quickly to make sure it doesn’t harden on you. Try not to use too much glue because the bumpier (thicker) it is, the harder it will be to get the lid to screw onto the jar. Then put hot glue on the edges of the lid with the fiberfill and press that onto the stitched piece.
After your lid has been glued, attach it to the jar. It will only screw on if you have pushed it down all the way and don’t have any excess fabric showing. If you do have excess fabric, you should be able to cut it off using an X-ACTO knife. I had little bits of fiberfill coming out that needed to be trimmed off. Let the lid sit on the jar for a while to make sure the glue is dry and hardened and the stitching is pressed into the lid tightly. Then, you can unscrew the lid and fill the jar with goodies – in this case, Hershey Kisses!
XXX
Carrie
