Crafting 101

My girls had a birthday party a few weeks ago to go to and I decided to try a new pattern that I got from Oh Sew Easy Life Style: 20 Projects to Make Your Home Your Own which I got from the library. It’s for a backpack and it took me about two hours to make, but I was using a pair of jeans so that took a few extra minutes. Here’s a photo of the backpack. I think it turned out cute! I lined it in pink and the straps are pink and there’s a pink ribbon to close it up. Next time, I’d make the ribbon longer just for added length. But it’s cute I think! She loved it!

I have more projects that I’ve been working on to post here. Check back to see them in a few days!

Yep, It’s a cute little Dora bag for little girls! I made this quickly this afternoon with some scrap fabric and leftover straps.

I have some more that I plan on posting later this week. I just need to post them and get them online. I hope that you’re having a good summer. I’ve been busy with the kids being home. Been swimming and having lots of fun. But I’ve been sewing when it’s been raining which has been a lot.  Again, hope all is well! TTFN!

I needed a small makeup bag for my purse and decided to make one. I found some green and purple fabric and a white zipper and there it was!

I got the basic instructions from one of those books from the library, the Bend the Rules book. I adpated it for what I wanted, but the instructions were roughly the same. It didn’t take long to make at all. I think it turned out cute and it makes finding my makeup so much easier!

I have more projects to share with you, I made some end of the year gifts for the teachers and other things that I’m going to be putting on my etsy store so look for those posts really soon!

So if you saw yesterday’s post about making the bag out of recycled jeans, check out what I put inside the bag! This bag was for my four year old friend Wyatt’s birthday. Being a boy, I had to be creative!

I decided to use old baby food jar lids to create a memory game. I took twenty jar lids and spray painted them yellow. It took a couple of coats. So when making this, the bag took me about an hour or so to make, the lids took several hours with all the drying so be prepared. You can start spraying the lids before making the bag if you want!

Anyways, while the paint dried, I went into my word processing program and made two circles, two triangles, two squares, two stars and two diamonds and then wrote out the numbers 1 - 5 putting each number twice. I colored them in and made them pretty, well, pretty for a boy! Make sure the objects are smaller than the jar lids inside, I measured the circle part that pops up when you open the jar. I then printed them out and usd my circle cutter to cut them out.

I used craft glue to glue the paper into each lid, but I think hot glue would work better. At least it would dry faster. I just couldn’t find my glue gun of course when I needed it! So you glue them in after the paint is all dry and once the glue is dry, you need to spray a clear coat on them. You can find this in the glue aisle of your craft store in a spray can. DO THIS OUTSIDE!!! You’ll regret the smell if you don’t! The clear coat is to keep the paint from chipping and it’ll seal the paper to the lid around the edges. The key is to spray not too close when doing the insides so it doesn’t ruin the paper. The clear coat needs to have three to four coats on each side so this will take a couple of hours.

Once everything is dry, I did all this in one day and let it dry overnight and it was fine for the next day, but adding an extra day would help it even more. But once it’s all dry, put the lids in the bag and voila! You have a cool and unique memory game! Good luck!

One of my four year old’s friends had a birthday the same week as she did. I’m always trying to find things to make for birthday’s and since this was a boy, well, that made it a challenge! I decided to make him a homemade Memory game.

It took several hours total, but that included waiting on spray paint to dry and a few coats of clear coat to dry. But the actually sewing took about an hour since I was working with jeans and doing this on the fly.

I took an old pair of jeans and cut the leg off a little under the knee. The key to this bag is to make sure you have a denim sewing needle and don’t sew on the hems or seams of the jeans. Your needle will break!

I turned it outside out and sewed a seam above the hem of the pants. Then I cut off the hem. You’re going to have a drawstring to the bag so you’ll need to turn the top over to create the hem at the top, but also to create the casing for your drawstring to go through. The trick with the casing is you end up having to cut a slit on the outside for the drawstring to go through. Since this is suppose to look like an old pair of jeans, you don’t have to worry about the slit where the drawstring is looking ragged.

Turn it right-side out and I ended up taking rope and hand stitching his initial to the front of the bag.  For the drawstring, I used the rope, I put it through it once, then took one end and ran it through again. That makes it draw up. To keep the ends from going back into the casing, I put buttons on the end. Gave it some class.

Tune in tomorrow to see how I did the rest…It’s fun and easy!

One of Deanna’s friends had a birthday party on Saturday and what girl doesn’t like a purse! (Sorry the picture isn’t the greatest, I couldn’t find the camera and had to use my phone!)

This is a messenger bag pattern, I adapted it just a tad, making my own strap out of pink material and I opened it up so you could see what I did on the inside for variety. I did take a close up of it closed, I really like how this turned out! I have another bag cut out and ready to sew up as well.

So the problem I’ve been having is making the bags a bit stiffer. I’ve tried thick, vinyl tablecloths for lining, but it’s not doing what I want. So it hit me yesterday - quilting batting! I have a bunch left over so with a purse I’m going to make today, I’m going to try and use that as the lining. I hope it works! I will post how it goes!

Like I’ve posted before, we’ve had a few parties to go to and we’ve been invited to some more, so I’ll be sewing more things it looks like! This bag was for one of Megan’s friends and instead of making a typical rectangular shape, I made it a different shape, not sure what shape this is, but it’s different. I think it turned out cute and Megan was happy and the girl she gave it to liked it so I guess it worked!

Remember those books I checked out from the library about a month ago? Well, unfortunately I had to turn them back in, but not before I figured out how to make a few things from there and get the patterns copied and figure out how they made the bags. I have made three bags and one wallet so far, I’ll be posting about those later in the week. They did turn out really cute so I can’t wait to get some pictures taken and get them online to show you!

Hope you have a great week, check out the site in a couple of days for more bags and other items!

Today I want to share with you a few of the towel bags that I have made recently. These can be super easy to make, depends on how simple you want to get or how creative you want to be. I like being creative! I made three bags one Saturday morning, so I’m thinking it took me roughly three hours to make all three. But I got creative so it took me longer, but you could make one bag in less then thirty minutes.

The first bag I did for a girl who loves super heroes. I used a red hand towel, blue ribbon for the handles and made her initial “M” with the blue ribbon on the front. The “M” was tough, but I got it done!  The other side I ironed on the Justice League for fun!I used iron fabric for that.

Next, I made two pink hand towels for two other little girls. I used white ribbon and yellow ribbon for the handles. The key with the handles if using ribbon is to get the ribbon that’s either 1.5 inches wide or two inches wide. Plus, be sure to stitch it on there good so it won’t come off. I sew a square then put an ‘x’ in the square for support.

For these two bags, I used some ribbon I had bought in a pack to make flowers and then covered a button with a yellow ribbon and hot glued that in the middle. One of the bags I ironed on a ribbon across the top with iron on tape.

You can see them all up close by checking out my Flickr photostream . I have pictures of all my bags in there. I’ve made over 25 bags not including the ones I made today, one will be for sale, the other is for me. I’ll show you those another day. TTFN!

Well, here it is, almost the end of the month and I have found a great little bag that is perfect for teachers! It’s actually a reusable sandwich holder that can double as a placemat! That is super neat!

I found it at The Small Object’s blog and it’s called simply a Reusable Sandwich Wrap. This is great for anyone taking a sandwich to work and it’s great for the environment. In fact, I think I’ll have to make several of these for everyone to use - even the hubby! She used fabric on the outside and vinyl on the inside, she plans on making another one with fabric on the inside. She also mentioned that you can adjust the size so accomodate subs as well. I think that you could also think of somehow making something to hold chips or cookies, maybe use a little tougher fabric that holds it shape better so they don’t get crushed.

So on the topic of lunches, I found a very neat idea for a handmade lunch sack. Have old jeans? Here’s a place where you can use them! Over at FamilyFun.com, you can quickly make a personalized lunch sack to go with your brand new sandwich holder. The instructions seem quite simple, probably could make this in an hour or so. Plus, you can get creative! Who doesn’t like to be creative?

So let me know if you make any of these things. I plan on making some of these lunch bags. I think the kids would like them. Too bad I didn’t see it before school started! I could have saved some money!

So today our family went to Washington D. C. with our two oldest daughter’s Girl Scout troop. We had a blast, but let me tell you, taking this trip showed all the different types of bags you will see. All the girls were told to bring a backpack to carry the goodies from the trip. Now you say backpack and everyone thinks something different. We brought backpacks, others brought bags and others brought oversized purses. In reality you needed a bag to tote on your back since we probably easily walked five to seven miles today; a bag to hold a water bottle since it was hot; a bag to hold a notebook, coloring and a snack; pockets I’m the bag for your train tickets and itinerary; and a bag to hold leftover lunches. In essence, a really heavy duty hikers type backpack.

I have a backpack that is also a diaper bag so it pretty much has all these features. My daughter carried a backpack from my college so it had all those features. I was just amazed at all the different types of bags I saw because since some weren’t exactly backpacks they had problems carrying things since they weren’t prepared.

I have no pattern for today, I’m actually writing this on the train back to Richmond. I just wanted to write something regarding bags for all my readers and to tell you that tomorrow and Monday I will have the final bag patterns of the month since October means Christmas! TTFN!