Goat Fead Backpack

I made my nephew a backpack from a goat feed bag and simplicity pattern.

                     

                                                             Bag Front                                                  Bag Back

Simplicity Pattern

This pattern makes a small backpack.  It is 14" H X 11" W X 4" D.  It was the perfect size for the feed bag.

                      

               Backpack Front                                 Backpack Back         

 Top View

             

                                                           Side One                                                  Side Two

I didn't take a picture of the inside, but it is lined with green nylon fabric.  The zipper is a two-way zipper.

The bag is interfaced with a stiff interfacing to give good support to the plastic woven feed bag.  A press cloth was put over the interfacing when ironing.  If the feed bag got to hot it would melt.  I did a lot of practicing applying interfacing to the scraps.

This is the hardest project I have ever sewn.  The feed bag has no stretch in any direction.  The curves were the hardest.  The lining fabric wanted to stretch around the curves, but I couldn't allow it to.

I would have liked the finished product to have been bigger since it was for an adult, but the feed bag didn't allow it since there were holes and flaws to work around. And probably a little to picky about how the pictures were placed on the bag.

Ultimately it was a successful project.

Nightgown Becomes Slip

I don't remember where I got this nightgown, but I don't like slinky nightgowns.  I do love animal prints so I decided to turn this into a slip.

I folded it in half lengthwise and measured from the bottom up each side the length that I wanted the slip to be and the fabric would allow.  I placed a pin at each spot.  Then I used my ruler and rotary cutter to cut of the top of the nightgown at the pin markings.
I made a casing at the top to fit 1/4 inch elastic.

The finished product.

Denim Jeans Become Denim Twirly Skirt

This is the Pattern I used along with 6 pairs of jeans.

                    

This skirt is 3 tiers.  Two pair of jeans are used for each tier.  I wanted the top tier to be the darkest and each tier to become lighter as they went down.  I forgot to get a picture before I cut up the jeans, but I had enough leftover to take a picture with.  The center 2 pairs of jeans are the same brand and same color.

First I cut off the hem of the pants for another project.  Then I opened up each pant leg by cutting along the inside leg seam.

I put the straight of grain line of the pattern on the grain line of the pant leg.

Here is the top tier.  Find the part of the jeans that you like the coloring best and place the pattern on that spot.

Tier two was harder to place.  I had to put it where it would fit and still be on the straight of grain.  You can see that I had to put the edges into the seam allowance.  The top left portion of the pattern was in the seam allowance too.  I cut the pattern out first and then picked of the little extra piece from the front of the jeans.  Several of my center pieces have the side seam in the middle tier pieces.  There just wasn't enough material to cut it out otherwise.

The bottom tier was the easiest since the pieces were small.  I could have cut out all nine pieces from one pair of jeans, but I wanted the two shades of blue in the bottom like the top.

This skirt has nine pieces to each tier.  I chose to cut six pieces from one pair of jeans and three from the other pair for each tier.

NOTE:  The lengthwise seams are all serged.  They unraveled quickly while making the skirt.  The crosswise seams are not serged.  They didn't ravel.

NOTE:  My skirt is a size large and I found that the larger the jeans the better.  More room to work around stains and holes.

Here is what the skirt looks like on.

Making a Halloween T-Shirt Larger

I got this t-shirt from a free clothing fair.

It is on top of the red t-shirt to show how much bigger it needs to become.

I got the black t-shirt and the orange knit dress from the clothing fair also.  These are the items I used to remake the Halloween t-shirt.  I took the Halloween t-shirt apart before I remembered to take a picture of it with the other clothing items.

I pinned the sides of the white t-shirt together before cutting the black t-shirt strips. I cut strips from the side of the black t-shirt following the curve of the white t-shirt on one side and straight on the other side.  I didn't measure the black strip.  I just cut a strip that looked good to me and used that strip as my pattern for the other strips.

 I sewed the black strips on and placed it on the red t-shirt again. It still needs to be a little larger.

I then cut an orange strip from the skirt of the knit dress about the same with as the black strip, but straight on both sides.

The working picture of the shoulder part is missing so I turned the t-shirt inside out, tucked the sleeves in and took a picture.  I used the white t-shirt shoulder line and cut from the black t-shirt the same way as I did the side pieces. The original piece of black fabric was about 3 inches wider and 2 inches longer.

Then I placed my favorite t-shirt pattern on top of the shirt and cut out the arm holes to match the pattern.  Sorry it doesn't lie flat and look like it matches the pattern, but it really does.

I debated about adding strips to the top of the white sleeves or cutting new sleeves.  It needed more fabric on the underarm too, so I decided to just make new orange sleeves using my favorite t-shirt pattern.

Here is the final result.

Next time I will do the sleeve area first.  It would have been easier to get the underarm curve cut and sewn.

Camo Backpack

Hubby picked out fabric to match his camouflage clothes and when we got home we found that they weren't a match, so a grandson got a camouflage backpack for Christmas.
I bought a  pattern and was very unhappy with it when I took the pieces out of the envelope.  The backpack wasn't lined and didn't have all the pockets I thought it should have.  It was to small also.

I added two inches to the width.  Four inches to the height and I don't even know how much to the depth. There was no zippered pocket on the front and the short front pocket had no extra fabric for anything with any thickness to fit without pushing into the space inside the backpack.  No loop on top either.

 Here is the side view.  This backpack can hold a lot.

Since I enlarged the backpack so much I decided that plain belting straps would never do. I decided to make padded straps to make a heavy load more comfortable to carry.

I purposely made this difficult to see, but if you look closely you can see something orange in the backpack.  I embroidered my grandson's full name in the lining.

Not only did I embroider it once, his whole name is on both sides inside the backpack.  His first name is on one side near the bottom and below each end of the zipper.  No stealing this backpack and getting away with it.
After all that he doesn't want to take it to school.  He plans to use it for camping, traveling, and things like that.

Mermaid Tail bag and Shark blanket Bag

Now that Christmas is over I can post these pictures.  I bought the fleece at the Black Friday sale.  I think the fleece was about $3.48 a yard.  I can't remember for sure, but it was less then $4.00 a yard.  I bought 1 yard of the main body fabric and 1/2 half yard of fin fabric.

I see these bags on Pinterest and decided I could make my own pattern and make the bags out of fleece.  Each bag is about 25 inches wide and 40 inches long.

This bag is pink.  I put the scales on the front only.  I liked it without the scales until I finished the shark bag.  After comparing the two the mermaid bag looked plain and boring.

1/4 of a yard each of red and white was plenty for the teeth and lips.  These bags were fun, fast, and easy.  Even the teeth were easy.

Three Purple Dresses

I went to a local thrift store one day to see what fabric I could find and found this.  About 3 1/2 yards of fabric.  I see why they got rid of it too.  See how the design ends on the picture on the right near the price tag.  Well that is how it ends and begins down the center of the fabric without any raw edges finished or meeting together. Nothing can be placed on the center fold without looking terrible.

                      

I got three little girl plain dress out of this fabric and could have gotten more if I could have used the center fold.

This is the pattern I used.  The pattern was 99 cents and the zippers were on sale for about 1 dollar each and I had matching thread already so the three dress cost about $8 to make.

The three little girls got together to try on their dresses and the youngest one wouldn't hold still for a picture.  Of course the others had to be wild if the little one was being wild. Hubby got the girls dancing on the coffee table and got this picture.  This is the best one any of us could get.
The oldest one wants matching purses for each girl since there is plenty of fabric left.  That probably won't happen.  I don't think any of them have worn their dresses yet and they were made during the summer.

Princess Elsa Dress

I went to Hancock Fabrics one day and the specialty fabrics were $3.77 a yard.  I wanted to make a Princess Elsa dress for my granddaughter.  She wasn't too happy about the fabric colors when I first came home with them.  I kept telling her that it was a Princess Elsa "STYLE" dress then and that was better.  I finally finished the dress yesterday and took it to her today and she loves it.

Here is the pattern.

 

Here she is with her dress.  Now she calls it her Princess Elsa dress.  It is long, but she is happy to know that it will fit her for a long time and wants high-heals for now.  

Princess Amber Dress

My niece wanted to be Princess Sophia for Halloween and her sister to be Princess Amber.  Well Amber dresses are nowhere to be found, so I made one.  Here it is.

I used these patterns to create the dress.  The Snow White dress was the pattern I used without the sleeves.  I used the sleeves from the Princess Elsa dress.

Summertime Quilt

My newest completed quilt is called Summertime.  It is from The Quilter magazine July 2005 page 20.
This quilt is about 92" by 107"  That is what the pattern says.  I haven't actually measured mine.

Here is the finished quilt.  It is a log cabin style with one half of the strips narrower than the other half.  In my case it is the blue.  I didn't want the blue to overpower the quilt.

Here is a sample of the binding.  I used strips from all of the fabric on the front of the quilt to make the binding.  I also cut the binding strips different lengths.  That made it easier to use scraps and make the strips at the end piece together nicely.

Here is a picture of what each square looks like.

Here you can see how each square is turned a different direction, which makes the overall zig-zag design.

Can you see the seam halfway between the binding and the bottom of the picture.  If not then I am glad.  That seam caused me to name the quilt Sunflowers from Hell while I was quilting it.
I quilted this quilt on my mom's quilting machine.  I carefully quilted the sunflower border to make it look like a border if you looked closely.  I got to the end of the quilt and found that I was 8 inches short for what I need on the quilting machine.  About 6 inches short of the quilt front.
I had one small piece of fabric left.  I cut it into 4 pieces each about 8 inches long and 27 inches wide. That was all the fabric I had.  I sewed the strips together on the sewing machine and got a piece then that was 8 inches by 108 inches.
I then had to sew the 108 inch long strip onto the backing that was on the quilting machine by hand.
I sewed the tiniest stitches I could.  Knotted it every couple of feet. And had very sore fingers by the time I was done.  Thus the name Sunflowers from Hell.  Thankfully there was enough fabric to finish the backing.
So much for my nice design of making the sunflower border having it's quilting look like it was making a border.  I quilted as close to the edge as I could and was ready to chop most of the border off, but mom talked me out of it.  I'm glad she did.
I actually love this quilt and should give it a nice name. LOL.