Kids Art Bag

Usually for Navratri (an Indian festival for celebrating womanhood over 9 days) I try to hand make return gifts for the girl children who visit our home. In South India, we keep mud dolls during those days to represent various mythological events that happened in the past; to represent the beliefs of most Hindus in the world.

Since I started to sew, last year was the first time I thought of making useful handmade gifts for the festive season.

My daughter recently started going to art classes and what she needed the most was a storage bag for her books and art accessories. Therefore for Navratri 2018, I decided to make travel art pouches/bags for kids to take with them while travelling. This way, the kid's are busy and parents can get some breathing time :)

I had to make 10 of these, but it took less time than was expected - around 20 mins per bag. But since I could work on only 1 per day, it took me around 10 - 12 days to complete the pouches and another 2 / 3 days to work on the personalisation.

And the end result:

tadaaaa

    

No pattern was followed, this was just my own creation and measurement to fit an art book and colour pens.

A Scrappy Quilt

We're all set for spring! or atleast that's what these fabric scraps made me think :)

A while ago, I received a bunch of fabric from our neighbour. In there, among lots of beautiful ones, were so many neatly cut scrap fabric that were maybe meant for a project she was working on.

Recently when I re-organised the"sewing spot" in the room I share with my daughter, I again noticed these scraps. They have been lying around for such a long time and I never came up with any pattern that was appealing to the eye. I had given up and thought of using ALL of those as bias tapes.

One day, while watching videos on Youtube, I came across this amazingly easy and quick scrap quilt top which only took 40 minutes to sew. It was sooper easy to make and much faster than I imagined.

I laid out the scraps according to how I liked and pieced them up all at once (as per the tutorial video) About 43 pieces sewn together so my quilt top is bigger than the one on the video. This is the longest I've ever sewn !
It took me around 3 hours from the beginning to the end to complete the quilt.

  

There was a plain green IKEA throw that was lying on our couch for a while. I didn't want to make this without batting & backing as it wouldn't be warm enough, so I used the throw as a backing for this pieced up quilt top. 

Like mentioned on the tutorial, the entire top was very simple and quick to sew. I just love how it turned out :) 

It seems a bit bulky to be used as a throw and maybe better if used as a blanket on the bed. But for now I think I'll just leave it on the couch for my daughter to use on movie nights :)