Textile Decor for Jam Jars
I love jam on pancakes ! My family cooks a lot of jam and puree in summer and autumn. For as long as I can remember, I have been harvesting the berries and fruits in our garden with my grandma and mom and coming up with new combinations for our homemade spreads with them.
These preserved homemade treats also make nice gifts to bring when visiting friends and relatives.
For a gift situation like this, I like to make the old preserve jars we re-use a little prettier, for example with scraps from my own print pattern fabrics.
Here are a few instructions for creating some no-sew jam jar decorations. Have fun !
The starting point for this project is a stack of fabric scraps from one of my first fruit patterns in different colourways. It shows stone fruits such as peaches, plums and cherries in bright colours or as monochrome line art.
Of course, you can use any type of patterned or solid coloured fabric scraps for this project!
Firstly, I measure the required diameter for the fabric pieces. This is easy to do with a tape measure directly over the lid of the jam jar you want to decorate.
Make sure there is enough material around the edge of the lid so that the fabric can be tied securely afterwards.
Either a template (e.g. made of paper) is created from the distance just measured, or a circle can be sketched directly onto the fabric around a glass.
I checked the measurement a few times, but otherwise worked by eye. It all depends on how perfect you want the circle to be.
I cut out the circle of fabric with my pinking scissors.
This means that the cut edges do not fray as quickly, without having to seam them.
The jar decoration can therefore be re-used several times!
The fabric circle is then centered right on top of the lid of the jam jar and held firmly with one hand.
Folding the material around the edges and holding it down will help in the next step, which is binding a decorative ribbon all around. It looks nice and holds the fabric in place.
And done ! The jam jars decorated with patterned fabric and ribbons are both a beautiful and classy vintage eye-catcher in one's own pantry shelf and also a nice gift idea.
Now - there're still a lot of other jars on my shelf to be decorated !
Of course, different glass sizes require different amounts of material. My scraps from making fabric sample cards were enough for the tiny jars, and I had some larger leftover fabric for the larger ones.
I think the decorated jars add a lot of flair to the kitchen.
Can you think of leftovers from your fabric stash that would go well with jam or other preserving jars? Let's go, make some decor !
If you're lacking inspiration, I invite you to take a look at my "Food & Drink" collection over on Spoonflower, which is full of colourful fruit patterns.
