Craftzine.com blog : How-To Tuesdays: Fabric Scrap Necklace

At my shop, we save pretty much every bit of scrap fabric. We can always find a use for it, whether it's for practice stitching by Sewing 101 students, as furoshiki-style wrapping, or to tie up half-yard cuts of fabric. I've seen a lot of fun fabric jewelry on craft blogs lately, and with so much scrap fabric on hand, I figured it was high time I tried my hand at it. Here's what I came up with.

Materials

Fabric scraps
Rotary cutter or scissors
Jewelry pliers
Jump rings large and small
Jewelry chain
Necklace clasp
Safety pin

Directions

Step 1: Cut 6 strips of fabric, around 20" long and 1/4" wide each. I used 3 different prints and cut 2 strips of each.

Step 2: Grab 3 strips of fabric and knot them together at one end, leaving about 1" of fabric at the end. Pierce the end with the safety pin and pin the strips to a pillow or your jeans — anything that won't come loose and that will give you a good grip.

Step 3: Braid the strips of fabric until they reach your desired length. Tie the end and snip off the excess. Repeat with the second group of 3 fabric strips, braiding them until they're a bit longer than the first batch. When braiding the fabric, you may want to periodically unpin them from your jeans and hold them up to your neck to check the length.

Step 4: Take a large jump ring and use the jewelry pliers to open it. Slip the ends of your 2 fabric braids into the jump ring so the ring is nestled under the fabric knots, and close the jump ring. Trim the excess fabric close to the knot. Repeat on the other end of the fabric braids.

Step 5: Using a smaller jump ring and the jewelry pliers, attach a length of chain (mine was about 5"–6" long) to the jump ring you attached in Step 4. Do this at both ends of the joined braids.

Step 6: Attach a clasp to the end of one of the lengths of chain using the jewelry pliers and another small jump ring. Then attach another jump ring to the chain on the other end of the joined braids. Wear and enjoy!