Sewing a candle holder with a star – instructions for a festive candle cover
I’m delighted to open the fourth door of the advent calendar for you today! I’ve come up with a small festive sewing project: we’ll be sewing a special candle holder – a cover for a glass candle holder in which the candlelight shines through a star with a chiffon background.
Stars are a very important Christmas symbol for me, so I like lots of stars around me at Christmas time. I use them to decorate the house and I love to give stars made of fabric, paper, straw or wood as gifts to bring Christmas joy and a ray of hope to the world. Maybe you would also like to sew a small cover for a candle holder so there are lots of stars lighting up Advent and Christmas tables.
Materials for a candle holder
- A glass candle holder with sides as straight as possible
- A piece of synthetic leather or non-fraying fabric
- Light-colored (white or eggshell) chiffon
- Gold thread or thread in a contrasting color to the synthetic leather,
- 5-pointed star template
Cutting out and preparation
First, measure the height and circumference of your glass candle holder and add 2 centimeters to the length and width and cut a rectangle of this size out of the synthetic leather.
Mark a line on the two long sides two centimeters from the edge.
We also need to cut a rectangle out of the chiffon. Chiffon is very slippery and tends to slide around, so cut it quite a bit bigger (4-5 cm) than the synthetic leather rectangle.
Now using the star template, draw stars on the back of the synthetic leather inside the lines…
…and then cut the stars out.
Sewing the candle holder
Now place your synthetic leather in the middle of the piece of chiffon with the wrong side facing down. As my chiffon is very light-colored, you can hardly see it in the picture below…
Fold the long edges of the chiffon over to the front and clip the chiffon onto the synthetic leather.
Depending on the type of material, the chiffon may slip even when it is fastened with clips. If necessary, you can put a little glue (e.g. from a fabric glue stick) to the right and left of one of the stars in the middle to stick the chiffon onto the back of the synthetic leather.
Now sew around the star with gold thread. I used a stitch length of 3 and joined the synthetic leather and chiffon about 1-2 mm from the edge of the star using the reverse-pattern foot with clear sole. I cut off the starting threads after a few stitches and once I had gone around the star, I sewed over the initial stitches again. At the points of the star, leave the needle down, lift the presser foot and turn the material as required.
If you don’t have gold thread, you can sew around the star in a contrasting color using the triple straight stitch – either way, take your time sewing this eye-catching decorative seam.
After sewing around each star, smooth out the chiffon again if necessary and fasten it into position again with the clips;
I have a light-colored thread in the bobbin so that the seam is barely visible on the back.
When all the stars have been outlined, it’s time to neaten the long edges of the candle holder. To do this, trim the edges of the chiffon: the edge should be inside the long marking on the synthetic leather. Chiffon is difficult to cut accurately – my rotary cutter, for example, did not want to cut it at all. Next, we fold over the edge, so that any small nicks in the edge of the chiffon are not a problem.
Now fold the long edges of the synthetic leather over by one centimeter – i.e. up to the drawn line – towards the wrong side and fasten the edges with clips.
I sew this edge from the right side, so I attached the clips with their flat side facing the wrong side of the fabric and the colored side of the clips facing upward.
To sew the edge of the candle holder I used the reverse pattern foot with clear sole # 34 again and moved the needle position one place to the right. This ensures that the folded edge is also sewn down securely. Depending on the type of synthetic leather, you could use the presser foot with non-stick sole #52 to ensure that the leather is fed in smoothly.
If you choose the same thread color for the seam as the color of the artificial leather, the seam does not stand out and the star seems to shine even more brightly.
Now you put the short edges with the right sides together.
Make sure that the top and bottom edges are precisely aligned and sew the seam with a seam allowance of one centimeter – securing the beginning and end of the seam well.
Open out the seam allowance with your fingers…
… turn the right way out and put it over the glass candle holder. Ta dah, we’re done! Thanks to the shimmering chiffon, the candle holder looks festive even without a burning candle. Why not sew another candle holder – or even an entire set?
I wish you a merry and peaceful Advent, with lots of stars pointing the way towards Christmas.
Best wishes,
Ines
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