Bean Bag Toss

So, I needed a quick gift for a 4 year old boy, and after a bit of googling, I ended up making him a bean bag toss game.

I thought about making counting bean bags like these ones , but realised that I was almost out of fusible webbing, so I decided to just make ones like these instead.

So here they all are.  I cut my fabric to 5" and filled them with rice because that's what I had in the cupboard.  Man were they a pain to sew around.  My machine did NOT like going over the rice so I had to try to keep it away from the presser foot.  

 Then I made a fabric basket for them, but in my awesome late at night sewing haze, calculated it all wrong, so ended up with a huge basket for the 5 beanbags I'd made.

 

 So then I made a little drawstring bag for some marbles, just to fill the hole.

Geni wanted to keep it, will have to make one for her too.

Caitie sewed a bag!

Caitie asked for sewing things for Christmas.  Santa brought her a pile of fat quarters, and my parents also gave her a big box of sewing stuff including a bunch of fabrics and various scissors and needles and such.

So on Boxing Day she decided she'd like to make herself a bag.  I wanted to keep it simple for her so I got her to make a basic lined bag with a single strap.

She picked out her fabrics and cut everything, and sewed it all herself.  I just helped her out with the pinning and some verbal directions.

And here it is in action.  She's pretty proud of herself! :)

Cloth Grocery Bag

I made a cloth grocery bag for my grandmother for Christmas using this tutorial on Craftster. 

I used a grey Woolies bag for the pattern, although this bag ended up a wee bit shorter because somehow I put a hole in the bottom of the lining so I had to make the french seam go a little higher to cover it.

 I opted to add some little tabs with velcro on to roll the bag up instead of making a pocket to fold it into.  My favourite cloth shopping bag is the one I can roll up :P

This fabric was picked after I held up a few options to my husband and said "Which one looks more like Nanny?"

And this is how it looks all rolled up.  Quite cute I think!

Another girls birthday.. another Buttercup bag!

I made another buttercup bag, this time for one of Caitie's best friends.

She's a collector of Littlest Pet Shop, so when I saw this fabric a few months ago I grabbed a fat quarter of it with her in mind.  In hindsight, I wish I'd grabbed more, it's pretty cute, and with all the fussy cutting I did for this bag, I don't really have much leftover to make anything else with it.

I made another mini gathered clutch for a coin purse, this one turned out much nicer than the last one.  And Caitie made a beaded thing to go on the zipper pull to fancy it up a bit (All her own idea/work.. I didn't even know she'd done it til it was on the purse.  She's turning into a good little crafter!)

Here is the other side of the bag and the back of the coin purse.

They're both lined with pink bubbles.

My iron was being naughty again, so it's not pressed as nicely as I would have liked.  I really should go buy a new one.

And here is her whole present all together. I was going to get her some sunnies, but those button earrings were too cute and the colours matched!

Now if you will excuse me, more Christmas sewing awaits.  Less than a week to go and I procrastinated a bit too much on some presents.. oops.

Teacher Gifts 2010

I have just finished the girls teacher gifts for this year, it's only the second last day of school tomorrow.  No hurry.

The idea for these was shamelessly stolen from here.  Their one was much classier looking than mine, but I was trying hard to just use what I had instead of buying more stuff.

The M's here are upside down W's.  There's been a bit of a shortage of M's in my box since I made a big pile of Mum cards for the Mothers Day stall at school a couple of years ago.

They're filled with hand sanitizer, a variety of paperclips, push pins, mini pegs, silicone bands, glass bead magnets (that I made), cute mini tape and choccies.

I was divvying up a couple of little stationery sets, so I went with reds/pinks in one box and blues/whites in the other.  Not that I kept the theme going when it came to putting in the chocolates.

Unfortunately all of the chocolates from the big box of Cadbury's favourites that I bought would not fit, so we have been forced to eat them ourselves.

 The M in the Mrs is another upside down W.  I'll probably run out of W's soon too.

I actually went and put a couple more choccies in this box after I looked at this photo and decided that the squares down the bottom looked too empty.  I let the girls put the chocolates in themselves, and I suspect she was trying to maximise the number of leftovers.

So there you go.  I think they turned out rather nicely.

Yet another Buttercup Bag!

This one was for an 8 year old girls birthday.  

I used some of the black cotton drill I had left over from Mike's cushions for the top of the bag and the strap. 

And the matching coin purse is based on the gathered clutch tutorial from Noodlehead.  It's pretty much just a mini version of the clutch without card pockets or anything inside.

The bag is lined with spotty blue fabric that matched the blue flowers on the outer fabric.  I wanted to use pink, but couldn't find the right one, and then it turned out I had nice spotty pink fabric squished in between some other fabrics the whole time, so I used that inside the purse.

In hindsight, I probably should have done the strip on the front of the purse with the black and lined it with the same blue, but it's too late now!

Oooh and my stupid iron put grubby marks on the purse too.  It's a $10 one from Crazy Clarks that I've had for yeeeears.  Maybe I should get a new one.

We filled the bag with the obligatory pair of sunnies, a little bracelet/necklace kit, and a sparkly headband.  I would have made her some hairclips too but I ran out of time.

So there you go, another Buttercup Bag.