DIY Sewing Folder

It was my Sister's birthday last week, and I was trying to think of something to get her as a gift. She's recently joined our sewing class and has been making some lovely things, and seems to be really enjoying it.

I'd been mentioning different tutorial projects online here and there, but realised that it might be handy to have a whole heap of sewing tutorials in one easy place to give her ideas of future projects, and to see just how easy some projects really are!

So - with immense help of my Pinterest page - I prepared a quite large document (from memory, I think it was about 250 pages!!) containing all of my favourite sewing tutorials that I thought would be useful. I set up a folder with various sections, including some blank sections for her to fill up later, and also a couple of expandable plastic sleeves to store paper patterns, and also picture inspiration from magazines etc for ideas of future projects (something I started doing a little while back, and it's been quite useful). I realised that it wouldn't be practical to print off all of the tutorials to store in the folder, so I selected one from each category to print, and saved the whole document to a CD that could be stored in the front of the folder.

Here it is:

I also bought a voucher from Fabric.com to go towards fabric for her next project, and my lovely husband made up a very realistic gift card for me, as I just received the voucher in email form.

She seemed to really like it, and I'm sure she'll have fun skimming through all of the tutorials in there. I'm looking forward to seeing what she makes in the New Year!

Ice Cream Cozy

A while back, I pinned this Coffee Cozy Tutorial.  The thing is though, I’m not a coffee drinker but it looked so cute that I wanted to make one, but had to find a reason ... !


Fast forward a few months, and I found my reason. Once a week my husband and I sit down with some vanilla ice cream with milo on top (is there anything better?!) and watch one of our favourite TV shows. We have it in small ramekin bowls (portion control) but, being a particularly slow eater, I find that my hand gets way too cold.


Cue the Ice Cream Cozy!



Front

  

Back


I altered the pattern slightly to fit the ramekin, but otherwise followed the tutorial completely. It was a great project for using up some scraps, and I love how it turned out. And, of course, finishing it meant having to try it out, right?!

Recycling Old T-Shirts – Part 1

I recently had a big clean out at home and discovered a stack of t-shirts that I love, but don’t fit anymore. I couldn’t bring myself to give them away, so I scoured the internet for ways to recycle them. I found plenty for t-shirts that are too big (blog posts for the future) but hardly any for ones that are too small.



I then came across mmmcrafts messenger bag tutorial that I had pinned onto Pinterest (seriously, who else is addicted to Pinterest?!) and realised that I could incorporate one of my t-shirts into that.

This is the t-shirt that I used (I’d already started cutting into it, when I decided I should take a “before” shot ... ). Can you see why I didn’t want to get rid of it?



The tutorial was so good, and easy to follow. I actually really enjoyed making it and it didn’t take long at all. For the main fabric, I actually used stiff curtain fabric and it was ideal – with just a red cotton lining.

Here is the finished product – the only thing I would have preferred would be having the image a bit further down, but I just had to work with what I had. I’ve had SO many positive comments about this bag, which is great because I love it too.



Stay posted for Part 2 ...