Since I bought my big cutting mat and rotary cutter, I have been using it more and more for cutting out fabric pattern pieces, as it’s so quick to do.

Pins tend to distort the fabric, so when cutting out it can be less accurate. Often therefore, I grab random objects from around the room, tape dispenser…. remote controls…. scissors. It was about time I had something a little better.

You can buy pattern weights, little heavy blocks to weight down the pattern onto the fabric, so that you can then cut out.

a) boring

b) actually quite expensive!

There are a few alternatives I have seen online, some like little beanbags, or little pouches with something heavy inside.

I had also seen some that were DIY washers wrapped in ribbon or strips of fabric. I decided to try something similar, and bought some washers from the DIY store.

For each pattern weight I used 2 washers (one wasn’t quite heavy enough). To join them together and and make them pretty? A little bit of crochet!

So take two washers:

…and some wool. Form a slipstitch, and make a double crochet around the ring of the washers:

Keep making double crochet stitches until the entire of the rings are covered, making sure that there are an odd number of stitches, then join together with a slipstitch:

You can leave it here, and just have covered washers, but on a few I decided to pretty them up even more with a bit of picot edging. First step, chain 1, *chain 3, ss to first stitch in the ch3, skip 1 dc, 1 DC in next dc**, then repeat from * to ** until you reach the end. As long as there were an odd number of stitches, you should end up with it finishing at the original ch1:

Like a little piece of sunshine!

I made some plain, and some with picot edging, in a variety of colours:

Now I can use my pretty weights to cut out my next project!