Little Makeup Pouch

I have an obsession with bags. Even when I don't really need another one, I decide to use up some scraps anyway...

Flocks of Birds

I've started a bird factory! Just kidding.

My mom needs ornaments for an exchange and she asked me to make some. These are the prototypes! She wants to pick out special fabrics. I just sewed these with scraps.

I got this pattern for the following birds from this blog.

Toddler Slippers

We don't wear shoes in the house all that much. It keeps things cleaner and I think it's just comfy. So our little boy runs around in his socks most of the time. I decided he needed some slippers.

I made these very much the same way as I made the baby shoes I shared last week. I did make my own pattern, though.

To do this, I traced the bottom of his shoes and added about 1/2" for a seam allowance. I free-hand drew a shape for the toe and then just measured around the back to determine how much fabric was needed to make a casing.

Last, I assembled them in the same manner as the baby shoes and added the elastic inside the casing! He loves them and they fit perfectly.

**The red pair is for Christmas.**

Embellished T-Shirt with Ruched Sides

I've had this plain white t-shirt from Target for a long time. It is a bigger size than I wear and was only about $4. So I bought it and wore it a few times. But it needed to be improved. I decided to do some experimentation on it and I love how it turned out!

First, I added the flowers. (I got the idea from this blog post for the flowers.) I cut circles from scraps of a pink t-shirt I had used for some other projects. I sewed them on with straight stitches.

To make the shirt fit better, I wanted to do some ruching to the sides. I did it the same way as this blog.

Making Fabric Flowers

I really think fabric flowers are neat. I made a few of my own from scraps (and even scraps of scraps!)

Start by sewing some strips together. It doesn't matter if they're exactly the same width.

Then, fold the strip in half and sew it with very LONG stitches near the raw edges (my highest length setting on my machine is 4).

The strip will probably gather as you sew. If not, carefully pull the bottom thread to gather the entire strip so it looks like this:

Then, starting at the middle and sewing down the raw edge, make a circle and stitch each row together. The back won't be too pretty (I'll have some ideas next week for covering this up):

And there you have your flower! To finish, just stitch the raw edge on the tail to the back of the flower.

Some variations:
For the pink flower below, I just gathered a single strip (to try this...don't fold it over to double it...just gather!).For the navy flower, I used a wider width of fabric. This is my favorite look.For the green flower which looks very full, I used a narrower width of fabric, doubled it, and gathered it very tightly before sewing it together.And here's a pink one I made with scraps from a t-shirt skirt.