Folded edges form multicolor stripes

When I was young, I would occasionally help my mom or my sister fold and put away the bath towels. (In case my sister reads this, I should probably admit that it wasn’t very often!)

Anyway, I remember my mom (or maybe it was my sister…) being very particular about how the towels should be put away. Only the folded edge was supposed to show. So when the towels were all properly folded and properly stacked, they made pretty bands of color with no untidy edges showing.

This pendant is based on that same concept. I took the small, leftover scraps of fabric from my “Stamped and Stitched Quote” project, folded and stitched them, then stacked them up so that only the folded edges showed. You could create something similar using paper, too.

I don’t have a step-by-step tutorial, but if you are a crafty person, you can figure it out on your own. A few tips:

Fold fabrics along the grain line. The folded pieces of fabric should be between 1/8 and 1/4 inch wide and several inches long.
Stack several different colors (I made sure that the same colors were not right next to each other.)
Carefully align the folded edges and then hand-stitch the stack together (not too close to the edge, especially if your fabrics are thin/lightweight.)

(Sorry for the unfocused picture; my camera has been dropped one too many times and isn’t always coorperative!)

Cut your stacked strip into 1″ segments and stack them again.
I used a metal mesh “fabric” around the whole thing to create a frame (held together by a length of copper wire), but you could also use ribbon or twill tape or a strip of metal to get a similar effect.