How To: Sunglasses Case From Custom Fabric Featuring Gelatos™ Colors

Have you ever looked at a craft product and wondered “How else could I use it?” I asked myself that very question last week while I was playing around with some Gelatos™ Colors in the Design Memory Craft Collection from Faber-Castell.

Now, just as a refresher here’s a bit of info on Gelatos™ Colors from Design Memory Craft:

Gelatos™ Colors are creamy sticks infused with brilliant color. The color slides easily onto papers and can then be dissolved with water to create watercolor effects, or left to dry for vibrant bursts of color. Try stamping with the Color Gelatos®, or apply a field of color and use a stamp to remove the color. Color Gelatos® work wonderfully on flocked papers and embellishments too! Gelatos™ Colors are acid-free and odorless.

But back to my question. I was sitting at my table and I wondered whether or not Gelatos™ Colors would work on fabric. So, I got to experimenting. I found that if I stabilized the fabric first with freezer paper, you could color right on the fabric and then add water to get the colors to move around!

Fabric stenciled with black acrylic paint.

I started with tone-on-tone printed white cotton fabric that I had stenciled with black acrylic paint. After it was fully dry, I used my Gelatos™ Colors to fill in the white spaces. You’ll notice that the white print resists the color of the Gelatos™ Colors, so you get an instant pattern!

Use Gelatos™ Colors to color in the white spaces.

A wet paintbrush blends the colors and reveals the print resist!

I was inspired by this technique to make a sunglasses case! Here’s how I did it.

I let the fabric dry, then heat-set it with my iron. I then removed it from the freezer paper, and laid it on top of a piece of acrylic felt. (Keep in mind, the stencilled-and-colored fabric piece was about 8X8 inches.)

Then I quilted the custom fabric to the felt using a decorative stitch on my sewing machine. You could use a free-motion stitch if you prefer, or even straight lines.

Quilting the custom fabric to the acrylic felt.

I squared off the quilted fabric and folded it in half. Using a bucket, I traced around an open edge and cut it using sharp scissors. I attached some double-fold binding along the edge as shown:

Create one curved corner. It makes it easier to slip your sunglasses in.

Attach double-fold binding to the edge that will be open. I also added some ric-rac tape because I'm sassy like that.

Almost done! Now you turn the piece right-sides-together and stitch the bottom seam and about 1/2 way up the sides. Clip your corners, turn right-side out, and press.

Stitch bottom and 2/3 up the sides. Angle stitches out to edge to finish.

I’m not too worried about the Gelatos™ Colors washing out, since I’m not really planning to launder my sunglasses case. But I am spraying it with Scotch Guard to help it repel dirt and water.

On the whole, I’m pretty excited about my new sunglass case- AND my new way of using Gelatos™ Colors!

This post was sponsored by Faber Castell & I am a part of their “Brand Ambassador” Program. I have been compensated for my time but all ideas, projects, and opinions are my own and unbiased.

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