Monday, June 13, 2011

Homemade Pattern Weights

Homemade Pattern weights

I wanted to make a silk nightgown. I hate to pin silk. I looked at pattern weights and Joann’s had small ones (4 pack for $14.99) a bit much because I wanted 12 weights. 
Looking around the dollor store, I found some decorators sand, in the flower and vase section. 
I checked all over for small tight containers until I found theses mint containers. They were the perfect size.

I wanted an even dozen weights. I opened each container and dumped out the mints. I have to say I just threw away the mints, they are not to my taste (ie. They were awful).
I peeled the labels off, then using Goo Gone, removed the sticky residue.
Some of the stickers needed to be scrapped off, especially the bottom stickers. A small knife made short work of the stickers.
Once the stickers were off I washed the containers in soapy water to remove the excess orange oil.
After drying off the containers, it was time to fill them.
Using a small funnel, I added the sand.  I had to tip and shake the containers to get the most sand in the containers.

After dusting off any excess sand, I super glued the lid shut.  I ran the glue from the corner were the pop lid joined the container up and around the curved lip of the lid and back down to the joint again.
I let the containers dry overnight.
I have a small plastic container to store the weights in.
I bought 4 containers of sand: $4.00 used only 1 = $1
I bought 12 mints: $6.00
Super glue: 4 single packs at Target for $2.15 used one single tube.
Blue storage container   $1.00
Twelve pattern weights $ 10.15

2 comments:

  1. Awesome idea thanks for sharing!

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  2. New to your blog. I don't know if you will get this but "in the olden days" I used large
    washers from the hardware store. I used glue and glued felt to them. Another thing we used was kitchen knives. Those are FREE!!

    ReplyDelete