Ipad / messenger bag

Its the end of 2016!

Besides sewing, I've also started to learn to knit (the perfect thing to do in this season). Not only is knitting interesting,  but its also extremely relaxing :) Theres this local facebook group for knitters where many members were willing to teach those who were interested to learn. Thats how I met Gerri who taught me how to knit the first ever hat for my daughter (and oh, I also made another one with a different pattern for myself :) (can be found on my knitting post))

But my knitting venture has nothing to do with this post. 

Whenever I met Gerri for my classes she used to bring along this very cute messenger bag to carry her Surface in. While I used my phone to read patterns, it was extremely cumbersome to navigate between multiple pdfs. Therefore, like her, I too wanted to carry along a tablet for my next sessions (instead of a laptop, it was just lighter to carry the tablet around). So I made one :)

Since we eat a lot of rice there are empty rice bags always lying around our home. We usually donate the bags but this time I turned it into my iPad bag's lining and used the zip for the second pocket on the bag. Here are the materials I used:

The pattern is very similar to my other bags in the blog. This one was much easier to work on because I did not have to fuse any interfacing on the back side as the rice bag was thick enough. However, I did fuse some interfacing on the front side because of the second zipper. 

       

The strap was saved from another bag that was given away; I just couldn't find a better way to recycle it :) 

PS: Like I always mention on all my posts, there are multiple tutorials on Pinterest & Youtube for an iPad/messenger bag, however, I did not follow any for this one.

Hair Clip Organiser

Usually with girl children, they want to dress up and wear matching accessories :) So when my parents were coming over to visit us I had asked my mom to bring a lot of hair clips. But the thing with having so many accessories is that you just cant locate them when you need.. especially when your kid's late to school! I was having a very difficult time to pick an almost matching hair clip every single day because they were all in the same bowl and all mixed up.

Then I remembered having made a small organiser for my neighbour's daughter in Bangalore. 

So I decided to end the misery by making another organiser for my daughter's clips. I was initially looking to buy it off because I was unable to sew/DIY since I started working. But after seeing so many posts on Pinterest I realised its easier to make than spend $15 on a professionally made one.

One weekend I took my parents to a nearby mall where we went to Michaels to buy some beads.. there we saw very cheap ribbons for just a dollar :) So I bought a couple and sewed them together and included a zillion partitions to hold all her zillion clips. 

I bought the J monogram in Michaels too and the roses were from an old hair band that had snapped. 

Now, this is what it looks like :) 

Tshirt to Pyjama

One of my brother's friends owns a garment factory outlet. The store mainly stocks sports clothing, amongst others, made of bamboo cotton which keeps you cool during summers and warm during winters. Sadly, the store holds clothes only for adults and nothing for kids. 

So last year, before moving here we decided to buy a couple of bamboo cotton clothes to wear at home. The cloth is super soft and my husband fell in love with it right away. 

Over the past year the only full-arm t-shirt he bought had become tight (ahem.. not because the t-shirt shrunk!). However, he was still not done with having it around so I decided to make a pyjama for my daughter - this way the t-shirt would still be in the family :) 

After watching few videos and tutorials on Youtube and Pinterest I ended up with my first pyjamas for my daughter:

I traced out an existing pyjama pants as pattern and cut 2 pieces of the tshirt. 

I sew up the sides together by inserting one leg piece right-side out into the other leg piece wrong side out and then turned the attached pieces wrong side out.

After that I attached the elastic to the waist area. And I ended up with this:

In the picture, the pant looks like capris because a small portion of the material was stuck in her crotch (which I noticed only after uploading the picture).

Frock from an old shirt

After a few months break, I am back to sewing! The first half of the year was very eventful for our family but now things have started to settle down and we are back to our routines!

Since summer has officially begun in this part of the country, my husband and I got to cleaning our wardrobe last weekend. There were so many clothes he wanted to get rid off/donate. And off the lot, there was this shirt (10 years old that I gifted him for our engagement) and I thought to try and convert it into a frock for my little one. And as usual, I found some great tutorials on pinterest and youtube..

This is what I had:

I traced one of my daughter's old frocks; the picture above shows it vaguely. While cutting it, you want to fold the shirt into half and then cut on one side, this makes both sides even.

I hemmed the bottom, hands and neck. Maybe I should have added a pocket or two but oh well! I might just applique a picture onto it sometime later :)

Zippered Handbag

We had recently bought a white coloured Poang chair from Ikea; since my daughter loves to dirty furniture at home, we were sure the chair wouldn't retain its colour for too long.... And so I wanted to make a dark chair cover for it but was completely out of cloth.

Coincidentally my inlaws are visiting us from India and we told them to get a few yards of cloths for my sewing projects. The Poang chair took up more than two thirds of the cloth they bought and I was wondering what the remaining could be used for.

That's when I remembered I've always wanted to try making a zippered handbag.. As usual, I went onto Pinterest.com and pulled out some real great tutorials for making a zippered bag.

I put in my own version of pockets in the front, back and inside of the bag. 

The front pockets can hold a water bottle and/or sunglasses or lenses and the inside pockets can hold a phone, a couple of pens or make up stuff and a place to hang keys :)

An Owl Purse

For a while my daughter has been obsessed with owls.. maybe because she was asked to paint on an owl picture in her Montessori.

I was looking on Pinterest for something cute to make for her and came across many simple and cute owl applique prints. And so I decided to make her an owl purse so that she carry her toys when she goes out (which she's very keen on doing these days because I carry one of my own :))

I made a bag pattern that matches the body of an owl..I drew my own pattern but there are so many on Pinterest that can be followed. And with the pattern as base I cut out 2 bag pieces and 2 lining pieces and 1 23" X 4" long piece for the strap along with 2 4"X4" for the patchwork (see pic below). 

I appliqued wings, beak, eyes and eye balls onto the front bag piece.

My machine was not letting me do a zig zag stitch :( :( (dont really know what the problem is) because of which my appliques look unfinished. 

Once the applique was done, I followed instructions on this great website on how to make a simple 1 hour bag (although since I appliqued and did my own version of handle and pockets it took me close to 4 hours to complete the bag). Oh by the way, the link also has an easy pattern to use for cutting the cloth. 

There are 3 pockets in this bag, instead of the usual 1 pocket bags, so that my daughter can keep her dummy mobile phone and visa cards :) 

I also patched up some old fabrics to make the handle look longer :)

Baby Cloth Memory Quilt

This is how it all began! When my daughter was born I had received about 50 new baby clothes as gifts. A few of them could be worn until she was a year old but the rest were all clothes that wouldn't fit her after a month.

Baby clothes are the cutest things ever, which made it extremely difficult for me to chuck or donate. So I saved two sets of clothes - one set (not as cute :P) to try out the memory quilt as it was the first time EVER that I was using the sewing machine, and the other set with all my favourite clothes which I am yet to turn into a quilt.
You could say I bought my Janome just to make this quilt. The SM is perfect for my needs which includes mild to little-heavy quilting, embroidery, general sewing etc. The machine is also relatively small and light weight which makes it very convenient to use :)

Now, back to the quilt .. I cut up squares of the cloth which had cute pictures or prints on it. I tried to make the squares as even as possible but since this was the first time many weren't perfectly squared.
I then arranged the squares according to how I wanted the quilt to look and sewed them all up together.

The last line looks like its plain cloth but there are little prints that say "princess" and "baby" on it :)

Two of our bedspreads were ruined by the washing machine so I cut off a big roll from each and used them for the lining and border (the creamy shade and maroon respectively). I bought some cotton batting from The Square Inch in Thiruvanmiyur, Chennai to use for the quilt. 

Since this was my first quilt I had a do a couple of random and uneven stitches all over which did not turn out as expected.. but oh well, it was atleast pink and colourful :)

Also, with some left over clothes I made a triangle banner that says "Sunshine" for my daughter's room.

The pic is unclear because the entire banner wouldn't fit in one shot and the panaroma view wasn't working well either :( 

After seeing this my aunt gave me two cotton materials to make a single quilt for her. This is what that turned out like:

My cousins had recently gifted my aunt an Ipad Air for her 64th birthday so with the remaining cloth (which was significant) I made her an Ipad carry bag with 6 pockets to put the charger, earphones, mobile, wallet etc.. 

The sooper easy tutorial can be found here : Simple tote bag 

Name Heart Garland

Valentines day is coming up soon and whereever we go we find so many hearts .. heart balloons, heart plates, heart candies, heart chocolates, heart photo frames.. the list is just endless :)
However, since we are not the romantic type theres nothing much for us to buy.. but that didn't stop me from making something nice and cute for my daughter - A heart name garland :)

I had a small piece of cotton batting leftover from making a couple of quilts (for my daughter, husband and aunt) that I didn't feel like parting with but it was also too less to be used for anything. So the felt garland seemed to be the perfect thing to make with the batting.

I bought some felt sheets from Daiso, hand drew hearts onto them (could be very uneven so its better to use some template) and cut two pieces for each letter of the name.

There were a few felt letters from a previous project so I stuck them onto the hearts with some fabric glue.

Unfortunately the letters were also pink so it didnt turn out very visible in the first two hearts.

I then learnt how to seal two felt sheets together with a butterfly stitch from pinterest. There's a great step-by-step tutorial here : Butterfly stitch

So I stuffed the hearts with cotton, sewed the two heart pieces together and made a garland with all the completed hearts. 

I used some glittered fabric paint to give some lining to the letters so that they standout. 

Painted glass lamp

So its not just about sewing.. is what I realised. I also like random painting and by that I mean painting my style (no techniques involved)

My mother-in-law buys a lot of honey from her friends in Madikeri (Coorg district) for my daughter. Coorg is very famous for its natural forest grown spices like cardamom, cinnamon, pepper, coffee etc. Honey is also one of their specialities and when bought in bulk it always came in wine bottles.

Being someone who doesn't want to throw away much I decided to recycle these bottles in a creative way (sadly theres nothing that can be stored in those bottles)

While I was watching some DIY videos on YouTube, I saw a beautiful tutorial on how to upcycle wine bottles into lamps and thats exactly what I did with two of the honey bottles :)

We had to run around to drill a hole into the bottle where the cord was to be inserted. It seemed so easy on the tutorial video but no one in Mysore was willing to drill as they said the bottle will crack.
But my mother-in-law (who is a big supporter of my craft work and without whom it would have been close to impossible to make the lamps) had persistently requested a guy who was half-willing and got it done for me. A BIG THANKS to her!

I bought some gold paint and painted the bottles, decorated it with few red plastic flowers and added some coloured fish-tank stones to make it look good. 

BTW, the lamp shade is from MOTHER EARTH.. I did not paint it :D

A simple cushion cover

There was a post on Facebook sometime back from someone who wanted customised cushions.
And since I had recently purchased 2 beautiful holiday cushions (which I got at a great price in Sears) I wanted to see if I could actually make one for myself :)
I wanted to add some applique on the front side but the fabric I used is so bright and colourful that I decided otherwise.

Again.. there are zillion videos on how to (sew) sandwich cushion covers all over youtube and pinterest but I tried a little patchwork for mine because I thought it would look more attractive this way. I have included brief pictures on what I really did but the technique is extremely simple and involves just basic common sense.

For a sandwich cushion cover all that has to be remembered is that for the back piece you need to cut your fabric into pieces and since you want the 2 pieces to overlap, you have to cut about 3 - 4 inches bigger than half.

And since I was patching up 2 fabrics this is how I cut mine:

When the 2 pieces are sewn together I ended up with this:

My cushions are 18" X 18" so my back pieces were about 11" X 11". After that I sewed both my front and back pieces (already patched) together and flipped it inside out.

I also made a patchwork cushion cover which measures 16" X 16". 

Travel Cord Organiser

We were frequently travelling when we lived in India - mostly either to Chennai or to Mysore or once a year to some other place for a break.

I love to travel light and so I never really carried anything more than my handbag and small suitcase/bag for my clothes. My husband, on the other hand, loved to take his entire wardrobe along if he could. His luggage almost always included his gadgets - mainly his laptop, tablet(s), phones, earphones etc. and these obviously came with their own sets of chargers and wires.

That is when I realised how great it would be to make a carry-on organiser for the cords!

I was looking for something where I could store these cords and also easily carry it around in our backpack or handbag (and mainly to save them from getting tangled with one another).

Thats when I came across this great tutorial on Pinterest -  http://www.liveitloveitmakeit.com/2014/09/makers-month-make-it-cable-cozy.html
Although the main idea was from there I did not completely replicate it and did my own version of the cords organiser. I didn't find great use of the zippered pouch that was on the tutorial as I didn't want the pouch to become too bulky after stuffing things into it; and to hold my phone charger I gave a bigger gap to one of my elastic partitions.

I used these:
Felt sheet - approx 12 inch X 10 inch
Scrap cloth (reused one of my daughter's shirts that was too tight for her to wear)
Elastic tape
Velcro
Fancy button (just to give it a pretty look)
Felt alphabets (again.. to give it a nice pretty look :))

And this is what I ended up with :

Mrs & Mr Pillow

Further to my earlier post on applique, I've been seeing so many of the "couple" bedspreads and pillow cases that look so cute and make a perfect gift.

There are so many designs out there that I was confused on which one to pick. Since my husband is not big on moustaches and beards, I decided to go with the shirt tie and lips to match it. Coincidentally my bedspread and comforter is white with black flowers (which is not seen in the pic) so that made it so much easier to choose my applique scrap cloth. 

In the picture the lips looks a little deformed as the red scrap cloth I had had printed white lines all over it (leftovers from the wallet) trust me it looks much better and like 'real' lips if you saw it on my bed.

Customised/Appliqued Towels

Who doesnt like personalised gifts? They seem to have become the latest gifting trend!

So.. I've been wanting to get a couple of towels customised for my daughter for the past year. A couple of friends recommended a few names who specialise in these but professionals (as usual) charge a BOMB for a small towel that wont even go around my little toddler's waist. But that I realised only after ordering and receiving the towels.
However, I should definitely say that they were really cute and my daughter was ecstatic to see beautiful princess and mermaids on them :)

And now since I don't have the option to get these delivered to me, I was thinking about trying my hand at it. Pinterest (btw .. am becoming a pinterest addict) has a zillion tutorials on how to customise towels, cushions, pillows, napkins etc.

Here are a few simple ones I tried:

Towels for my daughter and me

                    

The applique designs were taken from - http://www.homemade-gifts-made-easy.com/free-applique-patterns.html 

I used: 

2 Plain white towel 

Heat and Bond sewable adhesive (the purple colour print one) 

Various scrap fabric

Names printed on plain white paper which I then reverse traced onto the heat and bond PAPER SIDE

I recently made another one for my niece (have been wanting to make one for her since my daughter was born).. She particularly wanted a swan on the towel so I found this really cute one on Pinterest which I replicated :)

This is how mine turned out:

It didn't look very nice when I sewed around it as I am not good with sewing curves.. so I decided to hand-stitch (blanket stitch) the flowers and water applique. The others were too cumbersome so I decided to machine-stitch them (far from perfect.. :( )

A homemade wallet

Sewing has become one of my recently acquired passions - and by sewing I don't really mean clothes but other items which I see on other pages and blogs and feel that these are good to be tried at home :) This has started to give me so much pleasure and though am not a professional at it (and the end product is far from perfect) I still feel good about the progress I make each time.

So... from the time I moved out of India I've been trying my hand at a few sewing and personalisation projects because for one thing the materials are so easily available here and for another the options you have is unbelievable!!

One such project was the Organizer wallet which I tumbled upon while browsing for a credit card holder on Pinterest.  The detailed tutorial can be found at https://elily00.wordpress.com/tutorials/wallet/  

The tutorial is perfectly detailed and easy (thanks to the pictures, which made my life really easy). However, I did use my own 'easy' steps while I did the credit card holder part (as I ran out of cloth pieces). The wallet turned out really colourful and much better than I imagined I could create. 

If you're thinking of trying it out, please check out the instructions on the link above and do share with me your creations!

Happy Sewing!

The outer layer and the lining clothes are Fat Squares from Walmart, the fusible fleece and button were from Joann's and the zipper pouch and the credit card pockets are from fabric scraps which I bought in India.