I have a confession to make… I have a bit of an obsession with brooches. It started all innocently: ‘this coat could do with jazzing up’, little gifts from friends – now I can’t walk past a charity shop or art gallery without coming away with some addition to the collection.
I realised I needed something to help organise and store my little beauties. I had been putting them into little vintage glass dishes (or even worse just storing them on clothes, which has resulted in a few snagged cardigans and some in-wash laundry accidents) – I decided I should make something to do the job better!
I’ve been searching for months for a lovely vintage frame to repurpose, but alas every one I found was the wrong size, too damaged or just not pretty enough. I had to pop into Hobbycraft for something else the other day and spotted a plain silver frame and thought ‘lets do this!’. I’d rather recycle something, but there’s only so much time you can give a project really before giving in to the easy option.
Now I must preface this next bit by saying I am not a ‘maker’ or ‘crafter’. Yes, I paint but this does’t make me universally creative – I’d love to knit, and sew, and whittle wood, and weave baskets, and all the other types delicate and intricate and amazing craftiness… But I just don’t seem to be that way inclined. I always start such projects with good intentions, but I always struggle with skills or the patience required.
Here, though, is my step by step guide should you trust me enough to want to make your own brooch display in the same way…
I gathered together materials: –
* A readymade glazed frame
* Batting
* Fabric
* Staple gun & staples
* Copydex adhesive
I started by taking apart the frame. The glass was obviously not going to be needed. I removed the backboard – this was going to form the base for the padded part of the brooch display board.
I realised I’d made a bit of an error – as a non-sewer I didn’t know my batting from my wadding or any other padding-related sewing goodies. Luckily my good friend Claire is much better at things like this and had a huge sack of wadding she said I was free to raid!
I laid the hardboard back board of the frame out on the wadding and cut several layers from it.
I did the same on the batting and cut one layer from that.
I ended up with five layers of wadding, and one of batting.
I still used the batting between the wadding and fabric top as I felt the wading might, with time, pull through the holes made by pinning the brooches onto the display (little tufts of wadding popping through). The batting, I hope, is so dense it will prevent this from happening.
The top layer was actually a pillow case that I had lurking in a pile of fabric. It needed a bit of an iron to lie really flat and look crisp. I gave it a quick trim down to make an oblong of fabric one layer thick and several inches larger in every dimension than the frame backing board.
I didn’t spend much time making the rear of my display board look really tidy, I just stretched the fabric over the padding and stapled it onto the back board.
I then pushed the back board back into the frame and secured it in place.
In the end adhesive wasn’t even needed – the padding, being slightly textured, sat nicely in place and didn’t move about. It’s just held in position by fiction of one layer against each other and the tension of the stapled fabric over the top. Hopefully it won’t sag inside over time. If it does I’ll just pick the staples off and fix it again.
And there go you – it does the job nicely I think!
(this isn’t my entire collection of badges and brooches – just a few! I don’t think my husband is quite ready for the shock yet)
