April 30, 2018

Girl Charlee + Cricut Maker :: Vegan Leather Banded Tassel Tutorial



My daughter Charlee and I love to come up with easy craft projects that she can give to her friends at school. The latest fashion trend with tassels can be seen all over the place, but not cheap, so we came up with this quick Vegan Leather Banded Tassel for the Cricut Maker.  This project requires only a little vegan leather fabric and fabric glue (with no hot glue gun mess) and takes about 20 minutes to complete.  They are also versatile in that they can be used as keychains, decoration on backpacks and purses, make great gifts, and much more!

MATERIALS

OPTIONAL MATERIALS

  • Key Fob Hardware

STEP 1: OPEN THE VEGAN LEATHER BANDED TASSEL PATTERN IN DESIGN SPACE

You will see a rectangle shape with cut lines for the main body of the tassel, a smaller rectangle for the attaching loop and also a wider sized rectangle which is the band that goes around the tassel at the top.  Just decide which tassel elements you want to make in which colors, and using the shown dimensions cut the appropriate amount of vegan leather fabric(s).  Click the "Make It" button to proceed to the mat preparation and layout screen.

STEP 2:  ATTACH MATERIALS  TO MAT

For this tutorial, we are going to use metallic copper vegan leather for the tassel body and navy blue vegan leather for the loop and band.  Using the rotary cutter and ruler we cut the pieces to make sure and overlap the dimensions shown in the design.  NOTE:  A great thing about the Cricut Adhesive Mats is that they are cutting mats and you can use your rotary cutter right on them!

Vegan leather is knit backed, so for best results apply to the sticky mat with the right side (leather side) face down.  There is no need to Mirror with this design.

STEP 3:  CUT TASSEL PIECES

For the cut settings, we created our own custom materials settings for Vegan Leather.  If you want to learn how to do this in the Cricut Design Space follow these easy directions here.  Make sure and star it as a Favorites and then you easily find and select it from the "Set Material" section after connecting to your Maker.
Below are the settings we prefer for Vegan Leather:
MaterialCut PressureMulticutBlade Type   
Vegan Leather        1520           Off    Rotary Blade
You can find all the materials settings for the Maker here.  Once you have your mat loaded follow the prompts on the screen for your Maker to start your cuts!

STEP 4:  ASSEMBLE TASSLE

Remove the tassel pieces from your adhesive cutting mat with the spatula.  My daughter and I like to remove the tassel body in one fluid movement as it is not only fun, but it opens up the individual tassels and gives them some movement!
Fold over the loop and then glue to the wrong side of the top edge of the tassel body as shown.  You can experiment with how long you want the loop to be and adjust the length to your preference before gluing.  Next, put a line of glue down the entire top of the tassel body and then start rolling up as tightly as you can, slightly stretching the vegan leather as you go until it is rolled up all the way and the top loop edge is neat.
Take the band and apply a thin line of glue to the wrong side edge and attach to the top of the tassel on the seamline.  Flip over and put a line of glue down the length of the band and start rolling up as you did with the tassel body until fully attached.

Make sure and stretch slightly as you are rolling to keep it tight, and adjust the top of the band to meet the top of the tassel body exactly to keep it neat.  Allow to dry fully.

Violá!  You now have a cute tassel in under 20 minutes.  You can customize this project for your needs by making the loop shorter to attach key fob hardware, make the loop longer for tieing into wrapping on presents or onto bags and backpacks, and even make tassels shorter to wear on necklaces or earrings!

We hope you enjoy this sponsored post with this tutorial utilizing the awesome Cricut Maker and our fabrics!  Watch our blog for more Cricut tutorials coming soon :)

*Please note that this post contains affiliate links and I will be compensated if you make a purchase after clicking on my links. This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Cricut. The opinions and text are all mine.

Happy Sewing!
~ Heather & The Girl Charlee Team

1 comment:

  1. Thank you! I've been waiting for you to put out this tutorial, can't wait to make a few of my own.

    ReplyDelete