Gift bags out of fabric scraps

Have you ever thought of making gift wrapping out of fabric instead of the paper? I hadn't so the challenge #6 in #12DaysofChristmasDIYChallenges was very welcome! I have fabric more than enough, plenty of material to use!

The challenge is set up by the following bloggers:

Jill @ Creating my way to Success
Vicky @ Vicky Myers Creations
Anna @ Tea and a Sewing Machine
Pam @ Threading My Way
Anne @ Domesblissity

I like to use gift bags when wrapping the presents, especially for grown up gifts. The shape of the present doesn't matter, just find suitable gift bag and you are done. Also, they are re-usable unlike the gift paper. The only person I know who has saved the gift papers was my grandma. She collected all the bigger pieces on Christmas eves and took them to the attic. I don't remember if she used them later on though. Anyway, I keep all the gift bags that come to our household, I have a nice pile of them and I don't remember when I last time actually bought a gift bag!

Of course they aren't always suitable so I have made some gift bags out of gift paper too and I also have couple rolls of tapestry (for the doll house but it might not need all of it...) that I have used. For example I made one for the baby gifts recently.

It is only natural that my answer to this challenge is gift bags out of scrap fabrics!

You need just some fabrics and thread, ribbon or something like it.

The red one is from my dad, it is very thick, probably meant for furniture some 20 years ago, green was left over from making advent calendars couple years back and the grey is from making a dress to my friend over 5 years ago. Some ribbon and woollen yarn.

And I just realised that I actually remember where my scrap fabric is from, should I be worried...?

Sewing is simple and nothing new there but here is a short tutorial just in case.

Cut rectangular parts on fold (becomes the bottom), longer than what they are wide. The longer they are, the deeper is the bag, naturally. Sew the sides, box the corners (optional).

Sew the thread/yarn/ribbon on the wrong side of the bag top. I used narrow zig zag so they would actually stay on. I folded the yarn double to prevent it from getting loose.

Sew the top. Leave the handles under the seam, fold over it and stitch over.

Done! So easy that there really is no excuse to buy any if you have suitable fabric on hand. Then you can just hope that the bag is actually saved and re-used. Maybe add a small tag asking to re-use the bag wouldn't be a bad idea?

DIY Belt

I have noticed that I have some funny ideas what you can sew and what you just have to buy. Sometimes they don't make any sense. For example I just ordered pile of fabrics to make new outdoor clothes for kids without any hesitation that I couldn't make them. But I have never actually considered making myself a belt. Why? I have absolutely no idea, it is just one of those things that you get so used to buying that you never think twice of it.

How did I end up making one now? One word: need. I needed new belt and I knew what they would cost in the shops, also I didn't want to go to city just to buy one. So I re-thought my ideas about making belts and simply did one. Just in case you have had the same weird idea, here is a complete tutorial how to make a belt. You don't even need any fancy or expensive tools!

You need:

fabric for the belt approximately 10 cm x 150 cm (depending the size you want the belt to be)
fusible interfacing equal amount
buckle
4 eyelets with parts to fasten them (usually come with the eyelets)
hammer
scrap wood

First choose your fabric. Of course recycled fabric works well here; table cloths and curtains are usually bit stronger fabric and will make beautiful belts too. I recommend not to use anything too light but it doesn't have to be very heavy either as you will support it with fusible interfacing. I used old, cotton table cloth.

Then you of course need the buckle. Where do you get them for free? From old belts of course! If you don't have any, go to second hand store and you are bound to find one for cheap. Or ask your friends, usually someone has broken or too small belts which you can break and take the buckle. Nothing breaks those metallic ones, usually it is the fabric/leather that suffers the time first. Also if you find a belt from second hand store with beautiful buckle but the belt is too small/big, just buy it and re-make it!

I had mine from a belt that I bought together with pants. The pants I have discarded long time ago but luckily I kept the belt. The belt is twined and not very usable as it stretches in use so I cut the buckle out.

Did I throw away rest of the belt? Of course not, you never know when you need it...

Measure the length of the belt and add about 20 cm extra + seam allowances. I added 3 cm to other end and 4 cm to other end. Then check the width you want to use. I recommend making as wide belt as possible. I took the jeans I was going to use it with and measured from there. I ended up cutting 7 cm + seam allowance wide.

Then cut the fusible interfacing to cover the whole belt, minus the seam allowances. Iron it on.

I wish I had a press to do that, it would be so much faster and shoulder friendly than with just an iron!

Iron the long edges turning the seam allowances in and also the other end of the belt (the one with 3 cm seam allowance).

Fold in half, iron.

As you can see, other end is folded in, other end is raw. The raw end (with 4 cm seam allowance) is the one that will be attached to the buckle so no need to fold it just now. Stitch around.

Next step are the eyelets. Here are the tools for this step:

Scrap wood is just working surface, it doesn't matter what you use, just make sure it won't be needed because hammering the eyelets on their places will cause marks on the wood.

Fold the fabric around the buckle and press with your fingers so you can see where the fabric folds:

See the red circle? That's marking the spot I marked for my first eyelet. It is on second fold covering the buckle and the eyelet here is needed so that part of the buckle is able to come through. Like this:

The package of eyelets I had, said that you could make the hole with the eyelet itself by hammering it on the fabric:

My fabric with double interfacing inside was too hard for it and all that I managed to make was a mark. But I used that mark to cut the hole with scissors.

See how I have drawn small crosses inside the circles? That's how I cut the holes. Be very careful, the hole has to be tight, if it is too big, the eyelet won't stay and the fabric will start fraying in use. It isn't even matter of millimeters, it is a matter of parts of millimeters between success and complete failure. Use the smallest scissors you have got. BE VERY CAREFUL!

Cut and try if the eyelet goes through, if it goes through there is no need to cut more, if not, just very careful small snip and try again.

Here too eyelets are through and you can see hole for the third one.

Add the other part of the eyelet:

Place the lower fastening tool under the eyelet and the whole thing on your scrap wood. Place the taller fastening tool on top of it all:

Start hammering. It won't go with one or two hits (of course you might have more muscles than I have, then it might), just try it and see if the top part of the eyelet is already bent enough to keep the eyelet still. Try pulling it and turning it to see if it is completely fastened. If it is proceed to the next step, if not, hammer some more.

Fasten the buckle:

Now your diy belt is almost ready. It can even be ready if you don't mind part of the belt hanging or you made it just the right length. If not, make a loop for the end of the belt:

Stitch and fasten to its place. First measure where you want it to be by closing your belt:

Stitch.

Ready!

I try to think new ways to upcycle fabric and this belt was definitely one! It would be nice to hear if you have any no-reason ideas what you can't make yourself? Have you overcome them or are they just in planning - if doable at all?

Reusable kitchen wipes and plarn basket

Spilled milk on the table. Spilled juice on the floor. Ketchup in fingers. Kethup on chair. Ketchup on hair. Food around the plate. Sounds familiar? If it does then you probable have kids and you know that to clean all that you need lots of kitchen paper. It seems that I have to replace empty kitchen paper roll with new one every other day.

With two kids around we run through 2-3 kitchen paper rolls per week, easily! They aren't free either, something like 50-60 cents / piece so if you make a rough calculation it makes 50-100 € in a year, depending on how much you use it, naturally. Might be less but as we are closer to 100 € with only two kids I don't want to know what the cost is in the families with more kids!

Something had to be done. To save money of course but also this is good for reducing one's carbon footprint.

I speak of course about reusable kitchen wipes or unpaper towel, reusable kitchen wipes, paperless towel, reusable paper or reusable cloth. All of these are names I found when searching for tips on Pinterest, I call them just rags or wipes. They aren't the ones you use for cleaning the kitchen surfaces but wipes that replace the kitchen paper roll that is used to clean up small things.

I saw some great tutorials about how to make them, it seems it is popular to make them as a roll with snaps and everything but the amount of work they need and all just so you can wipe out the ketchup from small fingers! They are also quite thick with two layers; one with pretty colour cotton fabric and one with towel. 

Those thick ones would be great to replace the kitchen cloth used for cleaning the surfaces and I might be doing those too but I already use some shop bought kitchen cloths that can be washed anyway several times before throwing away.

Let's cut down the paper consumption first!

These unpaper kitchen wipes are made out of old dish towels. They were just cut in small pieces and then I used overlocker to finish the edges. So simple and fast! I also cut these smaller than the usual kitchen paper as the dish towel is so much more absorbent than the paper. 

Then I needed something to store them in.

Where are all the cartoon boxes when you need one? Definitely not somewhere to be found, at least not the empty ones so I looked into the cupboards and found something that was just the right size! Only it was almost full of tea bags. I just looked a new box for them and had a cartoon box with nice colour inside and covered it with a fabric scrap on the outside. The idea is to have the box on the dining table and it doesn't even take that much more space than the new kitchen paper roll does.

I tried these kind of reusable kitchen wipes couple years back but then the problem was that they had to be taken into the laundry basket. I probably would do it but the rest of the family? Not likely to happen. I knew that to make this project to actually work they should be as easy to use and throw away as the kitchen paper.

How is it as easy then? Have something to throw them to that is at least as close as the trash bin! No excuses there anymore. I don't want anything more stuff on the tables than there already is so the only logical solution was to find a place for used wipes somewhere around the trash bin.

Of course I could have bought a plastic box and attach it with screws inside the the trash bin cupboard door. But there is enough stuff in our household without me buying new one for something like this. However, I didn't find anything suitable, mainly it was the size that made it difficult as it was supposed to be hanging inside the door. There aren't much space. Also it had to be easy to clean so no cartoon box would suit for that one.

Then I decided I would try out something I have been looking for a while now - crochet a basket with plarn! Easy to clean, easy to make the size I want.

Plarn (=plastic yarn) is very good example about upcycling something. You can cut your old plastic bags very easily into plarn and then crochet it with usual hook. I cut my plarn strips about 2cm wide and used hook of 7mm. Mind you, even for a project like this I chose the plastic bags that had some holes in them. The whole ones could still be used as trash bags!

Plarn can be cut in many ways but I think it is the best to cut one continuous stripe for two reasons; 1. it is very fast to cut and 2. it doesn't have any knots in middle. There is a how to here: https://plastiqrecreation.blogspot.fi/2009/04/continuous-single-strand-strip-cutting.html

The basked had to be oval rather than round because of the space I had decided for it. Again Pinterest is full of tutorials but they were for round baskets so I made it up while crocheting. Sorry, I don't have full tutorial for you as I didn't write it down (wasn't sure if it would even work) but if you would like to have a tutorial for oval plarn basket just ask and I will see what I can do! 

Of course the plarn basket stretches like any other crocheted work so I added some rope for two top layers:

I have no idea what the rope is, I got it from my father, might as well be something that is used when upholstering furniture. It is very stiff and definitely won't stretch! I just crocheted around it so it is hiding inside the top layers.

On the last layer I made two loops where I can hang it from:

Also the loops have rope inside.

The plarn basket will be hung inside the trash bin cupboard door, the clean reusable kitchen wipes stored in their own cartoon box on a table and all of the paper rolls hidden. There won't be any excuses not to use the reusable wipes instead of the papery ones or what do you think?

Travelling with kids part 3 - travel tray

Final part of travelling with kids is travel tray. Super useful during long car trips when the kids can play with their small toys on their laps without them getting lost all the time. It keeps them entertained and happy for a long time, especially together with the toy bag and dry erase book.

First, the idea of travel tray isn't mine and for the pillow I used the tutorial by Two Sisters Crafting. Their tray is bigger and I have to admit it is much more neat than mine! They used new cookie tray that was painted nicely. Apparently from somewhere you can buy cookie sheets for 1$ per piece. Not here though. They would be perfect for crafting purposes for the kids but I highly suspect that you won't get an for a price like that here!

As my last post wasn't anything upcycled but a tutorial about getting best result with twin needle and the one previous that new clothes for my kids, I promised the next post would be something upcycled. This one is through and through. Here is what I used:

One plastic tray that was cut half. Plastic is near impossible to cut by hand and I was wondering how to cut it when my brother happened to visit. He said that our dad has that kind of saw that can cut it nice and neatly. Too bad he tried some other saw first and the plastic broke a bit. It was quite neat though after finished with the correct saw but the halves had some sharp points and I used duct tape to fix that (only thing here that isn't upcycled). Not pretty but it gets the job done and stays on. Why cut it half then? I was asked that and my answer was that it is too big. That's true! I asked for ideas how to cut a tray and I'm asked why I want to cut it? Don't you usually want to cut something that is too big to make it smaller? Yes, the tray was too big to fit on the kids' laps with the toy bags resting on the car tables in front of them. I think it would have been too big even without the car tables so it was better this way. And before you ask, the car tables are fixed on the front seat, they can't really be used for playing or drawing as they are too far away for that and if they were close enough, the kids' feet wouldn't fit.

I got this fabric from a relative of mine with words "do you have any use for this?". I didn't at the time but of course I took it. Since then I have used it to make pockets for advent calendars and couple wizard hats:

The material is felt like and it is from a couch. Can you get anything more upcycled than some fabric that is from old couch when the couch was ripped and thrown away? I don't know what it was used for but it has been very useful after that. Only proves that you should always check and re-check what you are throwing away. It is rather big piece and it didn't cost a single cent, hard to find better deal.

But.. the problem with unknown fabrics is that you don't know what material is it. So, when you try to attach something with bondaweb by ironing it, this might happen:

As usual, I was in a hurry to get these ready so I was pretty annoyed when that happened. Of course, I should have realized to check, so it was just my own fault.

Different fabric scraps and patterns for cutting them.

These formed the bottom pillow. There is no need for the tutorial about that, just look at the Two Sisters Crafting link above. Couple changes though. First, I used oat to fill the pillow, second I added some padding so the oat won't poke through. Oat is from old warm/cold pillows that weren't needed anymore and the outer fabric is from crib padding that I ripped here. Like I said, upcycled through and through.

I cut two rectangulars just like Two Sisters Crafting advised to, the outer fabric bigger than the inner fabric and padding same size as the outer fabric. When you use padding like this, it is good idea to cut out the corners, the padding isn't needed there and it will just make the seam too thick.

Everything went well until I attached the pillow to the tray. I only had one type of glue that I could even think would work and that didn't. The glue stuck to the fabric but not to the plastic. There wasn't anything that would have been more suitable in our household and the shops aren't exactly around the corner so I had to use what I already had. Have you noticed that you really have to get creative when you can't just go to the shop and buy what you want? I think it is actually an advantage not to live next to all shops, I have to find new solutions quite often.

The new solution was this:

Small drill-made holes and yarn worked. It is just a yarn that goes through the holes and below is attached to the pillow with small hand-made stitches:

It was impossible to get the yarn tight but it doesn't matter really, it stays put when used on lap and stays on when carried.

Our kids like to play with small figures and they usually don't need much to trigger their imagination. A pillow or blanket can be mountain, stripes in the carpet a river and so on. They usually invent their own plays also in the car but I wanted to help a bit by making a small play mat for the tray. The pictures are appliqued, the cave was their favourite:

It has been used a lot, fits nicely on their laps and can be played on and they can also use it for drawing in the car. It is one of the best things you can have in a car! Overall I'm happy with it but it needs one improvement; the play mat doesn't stay on. Of course it doesn't, I don't understand how I didn't see it before. The felt-like fabric is quite stiff but there is no preventing that the plastic is slippery. For the next play mat I will sew some velcro on it and self adhesive velcro on the tray. I think we will be using these a lot in the future and they will never get bored as I can make more different play mats!