I’m going to be making at least 60 of these bags for a women’s event in March. I wanted to be sure my concept size would be appropriate for holding a full sized folder, Bible, water bottle and a few personal items before I made all of them so I  whipped up just one. Luckily, my prototype was perfect!

In a nutshell, I cut a long rectangle 13X36 inches. I folded the rectangle right sides together and pressed down 1/2 inch on the 13″ sides. Then I folded it again 1 inch and pressed again. Repeated for the other 13″ side. Now, the top part will be the casing for straps so if I was using a t-shirt I could leave the edges raw. However, this is woven cotton. So I unfolded my presses and pressed in 1/4 inch on each casing end then redid my folds so that the raw edge was hidden in the casings.

Next I stitched the casings in place. Then I stitched together the upper bag sides with my regular machine. I switched over to my serger at this point and finished the sides. After turning right side out, I stitched two dime sized circles on the bottom corners through both layers of fabric.  This was stay stitching for where I threaded through the straps in the last step. Alternately an eyelet could be used but that would raise the cost and not look as “hobo” as I wanted.  I used a seam ripper inside the circle to create a 1/4 inch gash. Then I cut two strips from cotton jersey, 2″ X 60″ each. T-shirts could have been recycled for this at a slightly lower cost but yardage was more convenient for making so many bags. Jersey doesn’t have to be finished and it very comfortable for weight bearing straps. Using a safety pin, I threaded one strap through one side of the casing and all the way around and out at the same side it was inserted. I did the same with the other strap on the other side. The last step was to pull the strap ends through the backpack gashes and tie knots to secure. Strap length is easily adjusted by trying on the backpack and pulling the straps to cinch. Then just retie the knots higher and trim the excess.

I will try to add pictures for these steps as I work on more bags in the next few weeks.

My daughter’s theme this year was Cars 2.

I actually bought a shaped cake pan for the first time since my daughter is just crazy about Lightening McQueen. I used a homemade chocolate cake recipe and had no trouble with getting it out of the pan(well, I did but I knew that was because the cake hadn’t cooled enough so I waited and it came out the next try without damage). I couldn’t find the special icing dyes for McQueen anywhere and I wasn’t too excited with the idea of all that coloring anyway. I’m extremely sensitive to coloring. I accidentally licked my finger while decorating with the colored icing and my tongue swelled up. :/ And that’s why I only have a set of colors in the house for making homemade playdough. So I came up with the idea of icing the cake in almost all white and using red colored sugar to get color without as much dye. The wheels and outlining are melted chocolate.

I was really tired when I decorated this since we’d been celebrating birthdays for about 60 hours at that point, plus entertaining out of state relatives. I was muttering under my breath during the hour of messing with icing about never again decorating such a complicated cake. It just wasn’t turning out as well as I wanted it to and I was getting upset. Then something happened that totally saved the day. We lost power just as I was about to serve the cake. So we lit a bunch of candles and proceeded with the cake. The cake magically looked 10X better in the low light! And the birthday girl loved it.

Here’s what I came up with:

The pillow is 6X14 inches. I wanted it to be washable so there is an inner removable pillow. My 6 year old helped me make that. The pillow can be removed from the back . I made the back with a sham opening.

I know you’re supposed to completely hide the webbing of the ball fringe in the seam but I preferred the lacy look the webbing gave. After I looked at the completed pillow I regretted that I hadn’t done it the “right” way though. Oh well, I gave it to her as is but will remember to completely hide the webbing next time I work with ball fringe despite what that little impulse  tells me.

This was about a 2.5 hour project. I spent an hour just on the applique. But the savings was worth it. This project came in at under $2 in materials. Of course, I just used stuff in my stash but the value would have been around $2.

I needed a new pair of slippers super fast so I decided not to dig out my Mary Jane slipper pattern but instead, use a simpler, elastic style. Prudent Baby has some great directions on how to put your slippers together.

I used an old sweatshirt for mine and used plain sweatshirt for all the pieces, even the “batting”.  The bottoms will probably wear out pretty fast because of that but I wanted something especially snuggly.

These can be made for just the cost of your thread and two pieces of elastic(about $.15)as well as about 30 minutes of time.

I kinda forgot to photograph some of the large ones but they were just plain blues and browns. I still owe her the covers and I’ll be working on those today. 

You are so sick of posts about diapers right? I have more interesting projects coming up. Right now I’m dealing with a need issue as my toddler has outgrown all her medium diapers and has only 12 large diapers. That’s too few for my liking. So I again copied Motherease and made a paper pattern of the One-Size style diaper.

I had a $2 cut of stretch terry from the thrift store that yielded 3 diapers and overnight soakers . I used a pink t-shirt for the binding and they turned out not too horrible.

Just wanna say again how much I prefer snaps over velcro. When babies are small, the velcro is fine. As they get to be toddlers they like to undo the velcro just for fun. It drives me crazy. But these will be overnight diapers so we shouldn’t have that issue since she’ll be sleeping in them.

My hubby gave an entire 48 hours to “whip up” something for a friend’s baby shower this week. Don’t you just love men? Well I was about to tell him to get a gift card because I was swamped when I had this super cute idea. The friend is a disc golf buddy of my husband’s and is having his first baby next month. What better gift than to start him early in the sport?

I’ve made this style bag 4 times now(including this one) so I can practically make it in my sleep and without bothering to make a pattern. An hour of sewing and it was done.

Hubby contributed three mini discs(hubby plays standard disc golf but there are mini disc courses as well)to complete the gift. It was so cute when finished that I wanted to keep it!

I may make another one just to use as a mini, stealth purse. It’d be super easy to wear this under a coat.

How’s that for a title? I was going to call this “The super big project I’ve been working on” but it just wasn’t as catchy.

My sister is having her first baby and informed me that she wanted to use cloth diapers. Yay! So I promised to make them for her as the baby’s gift.

Well, I decided to make 18 smalls(7-11lbs), 18 mediums(10-22lbs), 4 covers, and 36 cloth wipes. Each diaper required 3 cotton t-shirts. I needed 9 t-shirts for the wipes. So that’s over 100 tees needed. Luckily I know a church thrift that sells them for $.10-15 each. It’s a significant investment of time finding the tees, since there are just piles of clothes to go through, but I enjoy treasure hunting.

So the last few weeks I’ve cutting all the pieces needed for this project. Each diaper has 4 pieces. The soakers for each diaper need 8 pieces. Wipes are 2 pieces each. All in all I needed about 500 pieces cut. They’re almost  all cut out now(just a dozen inserts left) and I’ve have started sewing.

I need to finish by Thanksgiving.

Work in progress:

For “no frills” this cover took forever to make. But that’s because I tried to put binding on it twice to pretty it up and I failed miserably each time. The first binding was a recycled lycra suit and the second was a recycled nylon slip. Both would have worked well in theory since they are non-wicking fabrics but my binding skills are seriously horrible. So I spent far too long picking out the threads of my sad, sad attempts to make the cover better looking.

I should *gasp* buy a tool for applying bindings. Someday I’ll wise up.

Anyway, I left the edges raw. It doesn’t really matter with PUL, except for looks. I used a Motherease Airflow cover I already had to make the pattern and I used velcro since I don’t have a plastic snap setter. I do have metal snaps and a setter but I think those would rust? Anyway, I love the Airflow design because the side overlap prevents leakage but still allows air to circulate which prevents rashes. I’m on my third baby diapered with this style cover and it works!

As much as I love their products, I’d rather not pay $15 each for new covers. Homemade covers with  my half-price PUL are only $2 each.

After finishing this cover it dawned on me that I should just reinforce the 4, old diaper covers I have instead of making new. Motherease snaps will apparently never die since the covers I have are now 10 years old and the snaps are still working well. The waterproof coating is worn out though and the covers are leaking. Snaps are harder for toddlers to undo than velcro.

So that’s my next project, reinforcement of the covers I have.