Goodwill has so many great gifts for Mother’s Day. From jewlery, and clothing, to paintings and scarves. But, if you have a little extra time this week, why not use some of the great materials at Goodwill to make a scarf for your mom? Not only are they fun to make, but your mom will love the time and care you took.
To get started on this project, take an afternoon and go to Goodwill. Browse through the scarves and silk shirts to see if any patterns catch your eye. You may want to combine several scarves into a patchwork, or cut up silk shirts to make a new pattern (silk is such a beautiful material, and it's much cheaper to make a silk scarf by hand than to buy one).
You will need:
-Scarves, silk shirts, or lightweight cotton material from Goodwill.
-Thread, a template to trace, scissors.
-Spray starch will be helpful if you are sewing chiffon or other breezy silks that tend to want to float away.
The great thing about scarves is that you can design them however you want. If you find a great piece of fabric, you can sew a simple hem around the edge and be done. If you find a few fabrics that you want to combine, you may want to consider doing a patchwork. This can be time consuming, or very simple depending on the intricacy of your design. I will show you a few techniques I used on this scarf and then you can make up your own designs.
For this design I didn’t make a pattern, but instead worked on the fly (sometimes I like to be improvisational). I began by cutting out triangles from a silk chiffon and a bright yellow fabric. Chiffon is notoriously challenging to work with, but if you spray it with starch and iron it on the silk setting, I find it is much more managable. Next I sewed my triangles together in the middle.
After sewing, I trimmed the seam. Next, I flipped the fabric triangles to the opposite side so that I could encase that seam with another row of stiches (to make a french seam so that edges won’t fray).
I made four squares like this, and then added a small stripe of silk between each pair. I then joined each half with a final stripe.
To bind the edges, I used hem tape, but you could also simply fold the edges under and stitch. I attached my square to a larger piece of linen to make a bigger scarf, but you might want to use another scarf as a backing, or maybe you’ll decide you want to turn yours into a pillow or decorative wall hanging … all of these would make a great gifts for your mom!
Again, you can make this project as complicated or as simple as you’d like, this is just ne idea, but you never know what you’ll find at Goodwill, so be open to inspiration and see what catches your attention!
Happy Mother’s Day mom (and all moms out there)!