A Cigar Box Mariner’s Clock

I love a good challenge or two. The project in this week’s post pulls together two challenges in a weird and interesting way. I hope you enjoy reading about it. Here’s the story:

Last summer my friend and fellow Fiberista Kay, helped with a moving sale for her mother-in-law. While shopping I was intrigued by a tower of vintage cigar boxes. After the sale I asked if they had all sold, and when she said “no”, I asked her to bring them to our next meeting (these are just a few of them).

Years ago at a quilt show in Oshkosh, I roomed with another teacher who does amazing bead work. At that time she was embellishing cigar boxes ~ and I was in awe. Lisa Binkley is an amazing beader and quilter. Here is the top of just one of her boxes:

She is into many other fiber adventures now and you can follow her on Facebook by clicking here.

So why not turn a cigar box into a piece of fiber art with fabric, quilting, or ??? I challenged the group, and they said they’d take the challenge, but wanted time – so it’s not due until November.

Then it was decided that the next small challenge in my other fiber art group, ThreadBenders, would be called “Repurpose”, and was defined as: “repurpose something non-quilting to make a piece of fiber art”. This one was due in June.

I’d been wanting a clock above my sewing machine, and had purchased a small “clock works” for that purpose. A cigar box was certainly “something non-quilting”, but could it be made into a clock? And what about all those old watches I’d set aside when mom and I were making her jewelry trees. Hmm…

A traditional mariners compass has 16 points. During the pandemic I figured out how to fold a circle in a way that allowed me to draft a compass with 12 points like a clock (to read the post about my tree skirt click here) Hmm…

So I drafted one small enough to fit in the box,

stitched it up in pretty fabrics, made a false back to allow for the clock works, and adorned the box with the broken watches. It fit perfectly above the window!

And now I know when it’s time to take a break while stitching. I even did a bit of beading on a piece of wool felt and glued it to the outside of the box, even though that will seldom be seen 🙂. The lid had broken off of the pocket watch hanging on the inside of the clock (with it’s gears showing). So I used the peyote stitch I learned when making cuff bracelets back in 2013 to attach it to the piece of wool, and glued it to the front of the box.

The lid had begun to fall off, so the finishing touch was to glue a piece of fabric in place as a sort of “hinge”.

What fun to repurpose something old to be something useful! I can’t wait to see what the other Fiberistas do with their cigar boxes.