Japanese sewing and origami

Today we head off on a family holiday to Japan, so I thought this would be a good time to showcase the 'Japanese' crafting I've done over the years - from Japanese style bags, to fabric and paper origami and some Japanese fabric too! Hope you like them!

Fabric Origami bag - photo tutorial

This is still one of my most popular tutorials. These bags are fairly easy to make and super cute.  

I also made a few of them from upcycled old nighties:

And I also tried out a giant version of this bag.

Some Fabric Origami Boxes, square and triangular.

Some Fabric Origami Gift Bags

A Traditional Japanese Rice Bag - Komebukuro, with tutorial.

A Handibag made with Japanese Fabric. (made using this tutorial)

Paper Origami Flowers I made for a friend's daughter.

And finally what I recently learned about Origami and 

how good it can be for you!

I hope you enjoyed these Japanese themed features!

If you're interested in seeing some pictures from our trip - I shall be posting some on Instagram and my Facebook page - so please do take a look!

Upcycling nighties to origami bags

I have several nighties in my clothes upcycling stash and had an idea as to how they could best be upcycled.

The soft, silky fabric makes for beautiful little bags made using my Fabric Origami Bag tutorial:

Here's the pile of nighties I've got..

I think I'll make a few of these bags with this stash.

They'd be great gift bags for jewellery, perfume or toiletries perhaps - maybe nice little stocking fillers for Christmas?

From two nighties I made two bags. The straps are long enough for the drawstrings for the bags, and there's then a little of the fabric from each nightie left over, that could may be saved to make gift wrapping flowers or decorations?

Do you think this is a good use for those nighties?

What would you used nice soft silky bags like this for?

Mini Triangular Boxes

I found these cute little triangular pouches via Pinterest a while ago and pinned them to my Things I want to make board.

I had just a little time yesterday for sewing so was looking for a quic kproject and these fit the bill perfectly.

The tutorial is by Needling Things and she made these pouches as thread catchers.

It's a great little tutorial, and is basically a kind of fabric origami bag as you just make a double sided triangle using two pieces of fabric, then fold and stitch the edges together before adding the buttons. Nice and easy!

I made one using  left over scraps from sundresses.

I actually used this same combination of fabrics when I made another fabric origami bag a while ago:

I also made another triangular box with my cute cat fabric, and a scrap of plain red.

They are such cute little boxes that could be used for all sorts of things..

I'm going to give these two boxes to my daughters who I'm sure have lots of little trinkets that they can fill them with!!

What would you use boxes like this for?