Day 6: A Pearl Cuff - a diy pearl and felt bracelet


This is one of my favorites of the entire collection. I don’t know if its because of the robin’s egg blue or just the way the pearls look next to it. Its amazing what you can find at the craft store. This pearl trim came just like this – a strand of connected half-pearls. Easily and quickly stitch the strand on to some 100% wool felt and you’re done. The bracelet closes with a sweet little pearl button and shoe string elastic in the back. Okay so its not exactly a cuff – really more of a wrap – but on your wrist it looks like a cuff.
For a menu of all the other glammy, fun, jewelry tutorials, check out this page.

Materials:

Time: 30 minutes

Cut a half inch strip of felt. The length of a typical piece of wool felt is 12". This is usually long enough to go around most childrens’ wrists. If I add a longer closure that length works for me as well – but barely.

I like to sew on the trim first and then measure the wrist later. So cut the trim 12" in length, as well. Take two strands of your 6-stranded embroidery floss to sew this on.

Start by securing your embroidery floss

Sew the trim to the felt, keeping the string of pearls oriented in the middle of the strip. Sew once over the bottom connecting strand, and then the top connecting strand. Repeat for each following pearl.

Following that pattern of bottom strand, top strand, consistently will make the back nice to look at too.

Sew your stitch in the middle of the connecting strand so it has room to shift with out bunching.

Let the strip of felt fall as you go so that the trim curves as it will around the wrist.
Sew entire piece of trim to felt and finish off the thread.

Remove a bead to make room for button. Here is where you want to shorten the bracelet if your child’s wrist is smaller. You may want to leave a tab of felt extended beyond the button so that when it closes the bracelet ends overlap. This would also allow for expanding the bracelet as the kiddo gets bigger (good!). I wanted this one to be larger (can you guess why?, greedy, little me), so I used as much of the felt as I could for length. My daughter required 11" from button to the end of the other side before the elastic loop began. It measured about 11 1/2" with the elastic.

Sew button to felt securely.

Cut a two-inch piece of shoe-string elastic and make a loop with it.

Attach this to the other end of the felt strip.

Sew elastic to bracelet, carefully stitching underneath the last pearl. This will hide your stitches from the front of the bracelet

This is how the back should look. You should do some looping (whip stitch) around both ends, but also make sure you go through the elastic a few times so it is securely in place.

Trim the elastic bits.

See how nicely the attachment is hidden. See me get giddy pleasure out of it looking so nicely done.

Finis! Yes, I do love it so.

Tomorrow is a fun little necklace that involves a cool, but easy ruffling technique.

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