For a little while now, I've been looking for a better solution to stopping the door from blowing open or slamming on a breezy day. Something that slows to door's movement in both directions, and won't let it slam closed.
An old towel provided the inspiration for this one. The texture of the towel grips the carpet a little, and with some weight on either side of the door, it won't swing wildly in the breeze.
The weight is provided by cleaned drink bottles, which I filled with old rice, but sand, pebbles or toy pellets would also work.
Given the heavier texture of the towel, I decided that a thicker thread would be best, and chose woollen tapestry thread. As the towel is a little old and faded, I selected muted and neutral colours for my design.
Before stitching the decorative band on the towel, I measured how much fabric was needed to create the tunnel for the bottles by rolling the towel around a bottle.
Then I allowed for a little extra roll in, to just accommodate the width of the door. I could then mark along the front of the doorstop, so that my decorative band wouldn't be too low, and hidden from view.
The band of stitching was made by layering rows of Cretan stitch in different colours along one line marked with basting. I did four rows of Cretan stitch on top of each other, but if you wanted you could create a design by layering staggered partial rows in different colours.
Once the decorative stitching was complete, I stitched a simple handle from leather scrap on the front roll, so the roll can be lifted to ease moving the door.
I secured the tunnels on either wide with herringbone stitch, and then a running stitch through the tunnel and the base to keep the two rolls just a door's width apart.
As a final measure, after gathering the ends to keep the bottles in place in their tunnels, I sewed the inside edges of the tunnels at one end together.
This creates an end that prevents slamming, and ensures the two rolls stay close.
There was a lot of recycling in this project. The towel was picked up at a thrift store as a rag, because it had bleach marks on it and the bottles were cleaned, empty milk-drink bottles. Clean juice or water bottles would work equally as well. The tapestry threads came from my stash, which has been stocked by picking up random threads at op shops.
There is no pattern for the project, because the dimensions are guided by the size of the towel and the bottles used.
The decorative design is just along one line, and the spacing of the stitches was done by eye. The only guide I gave myself for this was that I tried to have one stitch of each colour in a loose sequence along the line of stitching.
Watch the making of Kevin on YouTube.
Have a look at our photo tutorial for Cretan Stitch.
Watch our Cretan stitch video tutorial on YouTube.
