Fabric Cuff Bracelet

Recently I have been exploring the idea of making fabric cuff bracelets, because I love the way they look, and they are small enough that making one wouldn't take forever.  BUT...would I ever actually wear one?  That's the question I struggled with as I went ahead and made one yesterday.  Usually I dress very simply, without jewelry (except my pearl earrings that I wear every day because they are the only ones that don't make my ears hurt!--and I do wear pins, but that's a subject for another day).  I find that rings, necklaces, and bracelets get in my way when I'm doing stuff, so I just don't wear them.  My thought is that a soft fabric cuff that stays put on my arm (rather than rolling around like a metal bracelet) might be something I could wear.

This is my first effort, and any time I make something new, it is usually not until the third try that it gets "good".  So here it is:

Browsing on the internet this week, I've seen that there are many different styles of cuffs.  I decided I wanted mine to be fairly narrow, because I definitely wouldn't wear it if it was really big!  This is 1 3/4" wide, which sounds small, but actually feels pretty big when I'm wearing it!  I just chose braid, little beads, buttons and charms that I liked, in a very quiet color palette, to hand-sew onto the canvas base.  You can see that I left the edges raw and frayed.  I stamped the word "happy", and added a pony-tail elastic for the closure, then hand-sewed a second, smaller piece of canvas to the back to cover the stitching.

This time I just placed things randomly as I got a feel for the process of making the cuff; next time I will plan it out better.  I would like to incorporate some embroidery too.  On this one I purposely used light blue thread to sew everything, with the intention that it would show and look interesting and random...but it doesn't really show.  Next time I will try a button hole...maybe...