Creating my way to Success

Upcycled uniforms to bags

What do you do when your sporting club changes their uniform and you're left with piles of the old style uniform in all the unwanted sizes?

Make bags of course!

That's what I'm working on in my spare moments.

I've gone through my usual guilty feelings for cutting up clothes that are still perfectly good for wearing.

But once I see the resulting bags, and know that the club can sell them and use the money to fund new uniforms, the guilt disappears!

I've started by making some simple tote bags.

I'm just using fabric from my stash for the rest of the bags, so there is going to be a variety to choose from.

I used waterproof fabric for the lining - since they are for a swimming club and very likely to have wet things put in them!

which is perfect for the bag linings, since they are likely to be used for carrying wet towels and swimmers!

The waterproof fabric is quite sturdy too, so it helps the bags keep their shape a little better.

I'm really enjoying this project. I've a few more tote bags to make, then I'm making smaller pouches with the short sleeves and some duffel bags with more of the main fabric.

Once I've got them all finished we'll hold a sale at the pool and hopefully we can contribute a significant amount towards funding the new uniforms from that.

This is a great way to

'Use What You've Got'

which is my motto this year!

Have you ever found a use for old sporting uniforms?

Upcycling jeans again - another Birthday gift

The first birthday party of the year is in a few days, so I had to think of something new to make for my daughters' friends again this year.

This time I made a small bag and matching notebook cover. I used my bag tutorial here and my notebook cover tutorial here.

This year I'm focusing using what I've got - so making the most of the 100+ tutorials I've already made!

Of course you know I love upcycling, so thought I'd use an old pair of jeans for some of the fabric - and matched it up with other fabric from my stash.

The bag turned out really cute..

I used a notebook from a stash of them I bought in the January sales, and included a pen in the jeans pocket on the front.

The notebook just slips into the cover, so once it's used up it can be replaced with a fresh one.

Hope the girl likes her birthday set!. I think I'm going to make up a few to have prepared for upcoming birthdays - and will add them to my Madeit shop in the meantime.

What are you making for birthday gifts this year?

Use what you've got - gift wrapping

Last weekend we were invited to a Christening and a Wedding.

It was a stunning sunny day, and the beach wedding was just beautiful - under the palm trees at the water's edge..

We bought the gifts to take - a cute cuddly dragon for the baby, and some Champagne and glasses for the happy couple.

But how to wrap them?

I didn't want to buy any wrapping paper that would then be thrown away. I like to wrap gifts in a more eco-friendly way and use something that can be part of the gift itself.

So, I had a look through my fabric stash - wanting to

'Use what I've got'

For the cuddly dragon, I found a piece of cute baby fabric.

I cut a large rectangle and finished the edges off by double turning and stitching all the way around.

The fabric is cotton sheeting, and the size I cut is around cot size, so the Mum can use it as an extra sheet for the baby or just a cloth.

To wrap the dragon I just tied the 4 corners of the fabric around the dragon and added a ribbon and card.

Next was the wine and glasses - already in nice presentation boxes.

I found some perfect fabric in my stash - dark blue with glasses of bubbly printed on it in gold. And some matching shiny gold fabric too.

This time I decided to make a drawstring bag to put the gifts in.

Again I tied a card and ribbon to the bag.

Definitely a better way to wrap gifts than throw away paper!

How do you wrap your gifts?

Relaxing sewing!

Yesterday I had my first real sewing day of the year. I made these pencil and notebook folders with fabric from my stash.

I used my own tutorial, and since I have made lots of these before, it was a nice relaxing day of sewing!

As I've mentioned before - I'm planning to use my fabric stash this year to make things for my soon to open Madeit shop. These are the first items to stock the shop. I plan to sew something each week - probably from my own tutorials.

It was nice to just sew and not have to remember to take photos of each step, or figure out how to make something.

I will make more tutorials this year - but with over 100 of my own now available here on my website , I figure I've earned a break for a while.

I like the idea of choosing something to make each week, and although I'm going to list things for sale in my Madeit shop, I'm not really focussing on promoting it. It'll be good to stock up on handmade gifts for birthday parties my girls get invited to. Plus I'm helping my girls set up their own Madeit shop for things they make - so it's all about helping them.

At this stage, if I sell anything through it - it's a bonus!!

(of course having said all that, I will post a link when I get the shop set up in the next couple of days!)

So nice to be doing things for a purpose, but without any pressure. (I hope that makes sense).

I feel overall more relaxed this year, happy to be continuing sewing and blogging, but feeling less pressured to focus so much on growing the blog.

Happy days!

Friendship Bracelets

My girls have been asking to make friendship bracelets for a while now, so when this package of embroidery threads arrived in the post ...

it was the perfect opportunity to try them

out!

I was inspired by a post from Pam at Threading My Way, who made a little friendship bracelet kit as a Christmas gift - such a neat idea!

We followed a tutorial that Pam recommended, using a braiding disk.

It was so easy, and in no time my girls and I had each whipped up a pretty bracelet:

Or anklet!

I've never made friendship bracelets before and really had fun with this. We're going to check out more tutorials and make lots more of these.

How pretty are they?

Gorgeous combination of thread colours!

Have you ever made friendship bracelets? Do you have any other tutorials to recommend?

Monster Pencil Case - a tutorial

My youngest daughter saw a pencil case in the shops similar to this and asked me if I could make her one!

Here's how I made it:

First my daughter chose the fabric - fur for the outside, and sparkly red velour for the inside.

Plus I needed a little black and white with some fusible webbing (Vliesofix) for the eyes, and of course a zip.

The size of the pencil case was just decided by laying the zip on it to judge the size of the mouth, and folding the fur in half.

(I cut the fur for this one was 35 x 32cm - 14" x 12.5")

I then cut an inner piece larger than one side of the pencil case as I wasn't sure how the slanted zip would affect how it turned out.

I also ironed the fusible webbing to one side of a scrap of black and white ready for the eyes:

So the first sewing step was to add the zip. I did photo the steps as I did it, but the fabric doesn't show the details too well.

I have another tutorial for how to add a zip like this here.

WARNING!! I managed to get my inner fabric the wrong side up here - you should place your inner and outer fabrics right sides facing when you draw, pin then stitch around the zip hole!

Once the zip mouth was in place, I cut shapes for the eyes from the black and white fabric and ironed then stitched them to the fur:

Next I trimmed the red inner fabric piece to the same size as one side of the outer pencil case (half the fur)

Then I cut another piece of red inner fabric the same size and stitched the two red pieces together around all four sides:

Finally, I folded the fur in half, right sides facing and stitched around all 4 edges, just leaving enough of a gap on one side to turn the case right sides out: