Removable Covers for my Necklace Displays

For the last 3 – 4 years I’ve used white leatherette necklace displays in my booth. Although I don’t do a lot of craft shows they have been showing signs of wear and tear. Along with being stuffed into storage bins they’ve been through a few rainstorms with z leaky tent. (I have a new, much better tent now.)

A few of them now look like this, or worse. Rather than get new stands I decided to make removable covers for the ones I already had.

Here’s a little tour of my process.

Start by laying the form down over the fabric. Wrap fabric lightly around the form and measure the length and width.

Mark out and cut a rectangle of fabric to the size determined in the previous step.

Double check the measurement and cut out the rectangle

Lay the fabric over the form again and use chalk or a fabric pen to mark the outline of the form. You can see from the photo below that I also decided to cover the footstand. The dark fabric and white foot just did not work for me.

I ended up using pins to mark inside the edge of my necklace form, then traced the chalk outside that. This is a very stretchy fabric and my intent was to sew elastic to the edge so that it will stretch around the back of the form.

Using the pins was a decision I regretted because the stretch cover ended up being too big. I had to cut off the first elastic and attach new elastic to a much smaller fabric shape. Now, if my fabric had not been stretchy I would have needed extra fabric to get the elastic wrapped around to the back.

Before sewing the elastic I made a pattern from the cut piece of fabric, so that more form covers are easier to cut out. (I also had to reduce the pattern to fit.)

Attach the elastic with a zigzag stitch. Use the widest stitch that will still hold the elastic in place. If you need to rip out some of the zigzag for any reason you don’t want to be trying to take out those tiny stitches your machine can make.

I didn’t worry about finishing the edge of this fabric because it is a knit that doesn’t unravel. If there’s any chance of your fabric unraveling, finish the edge before attaching the elastic.

Test fit the cover over the necklace form. Check to see if adjustments are needed. I had trouble getting the fabric to fit properly in the transition from the bust to the foot, so I decided to make another cover without the foot. I wanted to see if that would work better.

It did fit better but I still didn’t like the look of the white foot and dark form. Little foot covers ended up being sewn up.

I went back to my footed version and played with the transition area until I figured it out. I found I had to treat the area like a fitted sheet corner, cutting out some of the fabric and sewing the 2 cut sides together.

Here are my finished covers. I made some for the taller forms too but they aren’t fitting quite as well. There’s still some fiddling needed to figure out how to get them to fit better.