Crafting 101

Everyone loves getting something for free and if you haven’t heard, there’s an easy way to do it! Check out Freecycle.org, an organization that’s all about helping you give away things you don’t need for free and getting things for free as well. The best part (and how it relates to crafting) is people are always giving away scraps of fabric, old buttons, ribbon, baby food jars, yarn and more.  I have gotten all sorts of things from local freecyclers and I’ve given loads away (more than just craft stuff too!).

It’s really easy. Go to their website, http://www.freecycle.org/ and  type in your city on the main page. It’ll bring up a listing of different cities and you pick yours. Then it’ll tell you what freecycle groups are in your area and how to join the group. Once you’re in the group, you get to post your offers. Those are the things you have that you want to give away. You can also post your wants. These are the things that you are in need of or searching for. Two more types of posts: taken (obviously, someone has picked up your items) and received (you got what you were looking for!). It’s quite easy!

So check out your local freecycle group today. Most towns have little groups for smaller towns instead of searching in a Houston, TX group, you can look in a LaPorte, TX group to find people close to you. HTH! Share your freecycle treasures with me! I’d love to hear about them!

I was looking at one of my friends blogs and she made a neat crochet hook holder in some pretty colors. You can get the pattern here.  I put a picture of what she made here. I really like the colors. I would have to make the pattern and then triple it because I have way too many hooks and needles!

Now, I have two holders myself, one I sewed for myself for my knitting needles and the other my friend Allena sewed for me for one of my birthdays (tried to find a picture of it, but can’t). I found a neat site that has lots of sewing directions for sewing one. It’s called Cut Out and Keep and it’s another one of those sites where you can post different projects you do for everyone to see. But you can click here and see some sewed crochet hook/knitting needle holders. This photo is one that popped up that I really like the colors of. I want to remake mine for my knitting needles since I have lots more now that I need to put in there, but I want to make some pockets larger for my circuler needles and some scissors. This is the one I want to make, but it’s because I love the colors! LOL!

Anyways, just wanted to post something today and share what I’ve found online. I’ve been sewing, you’ll have to check back to see what I’ve made. Also, I went surfing the other day I have loads of things to show you!

I went to the library Saturday to get a few sewing books. I want to make some more bags to sell and I wanted some ideas and such. I also was picking up the Sew What! Skirts book so I could make some more skirts and not keep my friend’s for weeks on end! Eventually I will buy the book to have it on my shelf!

Anyways, I picked up two other books, Hip Handbags: Creating &; Embellishing 40 Great-Looking Bags and Bend-the-Rules Sewing: The Essential Guide to a Whole New Way to Sew. Both have some awesome patterns in there and ideas on how to take one pattern and make different versions of it. I’m going to have some fun this week making bags! I will post all the ones I make plus all the bags I’m making will be going on my Etsy.com store for purchase. I have to start making some $$$ with my talent even though my DH is going crazy with the fabric in the house! But I did get some good deals at Wal-Mart so the damage wasn’t too bad!

Keep watching for more bags and purses and other objects to be made! TTFN!

Well, I didn’t actually make a dozen, but it feels like I did! Everytime I was sewing this week, Kathryn (my almost 4 year old) would ask, ‘what are you making?’ and I never had to answer, she’d say ‘oh, a bag. Another one, Mommy?’ I had to laugh because that’s what it felt like! But I was on a mission. Today I will show you three of the bags I made which were for my girl’s teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week. I would have posted earlier in the week, but I don’t know if they read this blog or not so I didn’t want to ruin the surprise! Tomorrow will be another bag that I made for Megan. It’s made with different materials which most people don’t think about using for a bag.

Back to the bags I made, I made three total in two days. I used my new method of making bags for two of them, the third I improvised, but you can see why in the picture. Also, for these bags, I used webbing for their handles. You can purchased that by the yard at the fabric store. Sometimes they have a few yards in a package, but I usually buy it by the yard.

For the first bag, I used two fat quarters in blue denim and cut a stripe out of the green sunflower fabric. I sewed the stripe to the top then made the rest of the bag. It turned out nice!

The second one I went and bought fabric to make it sense I was runing out of nice scraps to use. Yes, I said it, I’m running out of scraps! Big scraps that is, big enough to make an adult size bag.  Good news is Wal-Mart had all their fabric 50% off, bad news is it was on sale because they are getting rid of their fabric department. So I got a lot of fabric over the last few days for very little money.

Megan’s teacher liked pink so I picked up some solid pink and then this really pretty pink and yellow flower fabric which I put on top of the pink to make a stripe on both sides of the bag. I only did it on the outside though. I think it’s pretty!

I also went and got some horse fabric and brown fabric to make a bag for Kathryn and Deanna’s speech teacher. She loves horses so I figured that would work! Just FYI, I used half a yard of each piece of fabric to make the inside, outside, a pocket inside and the handles. Yes, I made my own handles for this one. So half a yard of fabric of each kind is all you need to make one of these bags. Nice, huh? Also, like on the first one, I used fat quarters, but I added the stripe to make it larger. You can use four fat quarters to make a bag and use ribbon for the handles and boom! You’ve got a bag!

I hope you like the bags and enjoy looking at them. I have created a set over on Flickr with all my bags in it (sewn, knitted and crocheted) so you can see what I’ve done over the last year or so since I started using Flickr!

So, I was browsing the internet trying to figure out a neat project for my girls to do. See, they have to bring a flower in to their teacher’s for Teacher Appreciation Week. Instead of just going to buy one flower, I like to make them something about flowers or with fake flowers, basically something that lasts longer than flowers. So this year, I decided to have the girls make them flower pots!

This is a good project to reuse coffee cans or old pots or instead of throwing those vegetable cans away, make them into decorative flower pots. This is also a great project to use up all those leftover scraps of yarn or ribbon or buttons! We got rid of a lot of buttons that I got out of a random craft box off freecycle one time. I knew that I’d never use the buttons on projects, so this was a great way for them to get used up.

We used one large coffee pot and one smaller flower pot I had that I didn’t like anymore. We got out the hot glue gun and my girls went to town. After they finished decorating them, I filled them with soil and we put some pretty flowers in them. Now, I didn’t mess with poking holes in the bottoms and worrying about drainage just because they will probably keep these inside on their desk and I didn’t have anything to put under them. But if you were going to plant outside plants or herbs and such, punch holes in the bottom and put a layer or rocks on the bottom before putting the soil on top. That’ll help with drainage. I’m going to start keeping my cans as I use them, wash them out and make some decorative flower pots. Anyone would love these to line their porch or deck!

Did you make one? Have suggestions or ideas? Leave me a comment!

Last night at church, I hung out in the nursery since I found out some classes were still going on and mine wasn’t! So I visited with my friends Christy and Sandi. Sandi brought something to do with her. She runs a Daisy Girl Scout troop and they learned to make what she called Sit Upons.

Basically, she got one huge table cloth and cut it into strips that looked like they were about 16 inches across and 30 or so inches long. She folded it in half and punched holes along each side except the folded side. She insert newspaper between the top and bottom for padding. Then she wove yarn through the holes in a whip-stitch pattern to close it up. Her Daisies did one side, she did another and at their next meeting, they’ll do the final side. They’ll take extra yarn or ribbon (she hadn’t decided) to make it to where they can tie it around their waist so anytime they’d need to sit down, like on the grass or bleachers, they’d have some place to sit.

I thought this was a really neat idea so I had to post it here.  I’m always looking for things to post about! If you want me to post about something you’ve done and post a link I’d be happy to do that! Just leave me a comment!

We had a Mother/Daughter dinner at church Saturday night and the overall theme dwelled on ladybugs. So my friend Christy and I were working on a take home gift all week that had something to do with ladybugs. So this is what we figured out.

Amanda (another friend) found these tiny terra cotta pots that I spray painted red (2 coats) then my oldest two daughters used a q-tip to add black spots to the bugs. While they did that, I crocheted a chain of loops that I used for the loop to hang it on. Megan and I threaded the crocheted loop through the tiny hole in the top and added beads to keep it from coming out. We tied the ends together and the beads don’t move.

While we did that, Deanna put a jingle bell on some crochet thread and ten beads on either side of it. Then we thread another jingle bell through that one and tied it. Then I tied the beads to the yarn inside the pot and voila! You’ve got a cute little lady bug windchime! I think these turned out cute.

Of course, I painted them Saturday morning, we worked on them from about 3pm to about 5pm (even snapped a photo while we were stopped at a light of the girls finishing them in the car!), but everyone thought they were cute! Hope you did too!

My friend Christy asked me months ago if I’d make or help her make an edible arrangement for our Mother/Daughter dinner scheduled for May. I agreed and this is what we came up with. Everyone loved it and honestly, it was gone in like twenty minutes! We learned a lot from making it since I have a feeling we’ll be asked to make one for another church function in the coming months.

I got all the fruit Thursday and we met up at the church Saturday morning to put it together. It took about 2-2.5 hours to make, but we had never done it so we are pretty sure next time we can do it faster. It was actually a lot of fun to do and I think I’d do it again if I was asked. We had a good time making it and everyone loved it so I guess that’s what matters!

We used an empty watermelon rind for the base which was pretty easy to go through. We used BBQ skewers for the fruit to be on. We used a bread tube to make the pineapple flowers, but you could use cookie cutters. Everything else was cube or sliced.

We had fun making it and I’m sure we’d do it again if we were asked. I showed a photo to one of the ladies in charge of our women’s program at the church and she was impressed. We have a women’s function in a few weeks about the fruits of the Spirit so I feel we might be asked…TTFN! Have a great week!