Woolly gifts

I am a teeny bit obsessed with knitting covers for jars. It’s so easy, (as long as you can knit garter stitch), and the end results are cute. All you need is:

• A ball of wool
• Knitting needles
• Some thread and a sewing needle (to sew together the two ends of the knitted strip)
• Some double sided tape (to stick the cover to the jar)
• An empty and clean coffee jar, (or jam jar), with the labels removed.

You can decorate the jars, (like in the photos above and below), by adding buttons, iron-on or sew-on motifs, ribbon, or scraps of fabric.

The decorated jars can be given as gifts, or filled to give as care packages (you could fill them with wrapped sweets and chocolates, or sewing items, or travel-size toiletries). Add a tag which lists the contents.

The jar with the cactus motif on it, pictured above, sits on my mantelpiece with two LED candles in it, to throw out soft light on a dark night. I have another jar on my dressing table, which I use to store make up, and I’m in the middle of making another in which I’ll store buttons.

If you don’t knit, you could make a jar cover from fabric.

It’s an easy craft to try, which doesn’t cost a lot of money (I often buy the wool from charity shops), and it’s satisfying to a see an old coffee jar, that may otherwise have ended up in landfill, being used again.

Having spent so long working with coffee and jam jars, I’ve started to think about using them for other projects. I’m getting the urge to try to make a diorama (something I haven’t done before) and a quick Google search tells me it is possible to make them in jars. It must be very tricky to do, as the access is so limited, and I should probably start with something more simple, like a metal tin. Then again, the idea of positioning tiny weeny figures in a jar, using some kind of craft tweezers and craft glue, does appeal to me. An alpine scene is coming into my mind…

Happy crafting!