there's a spider on my toilet paper!

One of the blogs that I follow - quilt jane is having a contest where you make a cover for your toilet paper roll out of fabric. You can decorate it any way you wish - the wackier the better (at least in my book). She has a tutorial on her blog on how she made hers and I am here to tell you what I did. This isn't really a tutorial because I didn't think to take photos during the process but since it really is easy - I think you can get the basic idea and with some imagination - make your own toilet paper cover in your own theme or style and enter in the contest. Check out the group site on flickr

The covering the toilet paper part is easy on this - I cut off the arm of a black fleece top that I was tired of and used the arm end because it's bigger, hacked off a couple of inches more than the top to bottom measurement of the toilet paper, then hemmed the top and bottom on the sewing machine. You can then just slip it over the toilet paper and tuck the top into the middle hole. Quick and easy! Now you can play with your embellishments.  

Now I had a head start on this because for Halloween I had made this spider as a wrist fabric bracelet type of thing. I covered a big button with batting and then fabric for the body, attached a wooden green ball bead for the head and wrapped black and white yarn around long metal bread ties and attached  them to the body. This is all done by hand - good for watching TV work.

Then I took some orange fabric, made the shape I wanted (this was originally for my wrist so I measured my wrist and added an inch or so for seam and overlap). Put right sides together with batting, sewed all around leaving enough to turn inside out. Once it is turned inside out, iron flat and that open space you can sew together when you make the spider web. For that use black thread and free motion quilt a spider web design all over the orange fabric. If you need help visualizing a web go here to see a simple one.

Then sew on any buttons or beads that seem appropriate for your project. Lastly I took some of those dollar store hair ties with the plastic balls (green in the photo) and I cut off one end, sewed by hand the ball to the black fabric fleece base, then tacked the elastic with the other ball to the top orange / spider part. That will enable you to easily take the top part on and off. You could make one for every holiday or season. The skies the limit for these....................mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmh?  how could I make a sky cover????

"she thinks to herself as the wheels of creativity churn in her head"