Machine stitched Christmas card

Some fabric left over from the advent calendar, glued onto card then embellished with machine sewing.

Handwritten message and mounted onto a square card.

Advent bunting

I've had this idea in my head for ages - I'm not saying it's all my own idea, I'm sure it's been done before! 

I bought a metre of Christmas fabric and made 24 pockets (roughly 5 inches square) and stitched them at regular intervals along a length of bias binding.

The numbers are hand embroidered onto felt - oh, how I hate hand sewing!

And now it's strung around the hallway, ready to be filled with treats!

Fabric upcycling

Now I love a beautiful fabric shop with lovely rolls of brand new fabric as much as the next woman, but I think I love upcycled fabrics even more. I love the rummaging, the searching, the bargain hunting!

In fact this whole post has been inspired by a recent charity shop fest where I purchased this absolutely fabulous, vintage (St Michael) king size duvet cover. 4 metres of extra wide fabric for £2; I was completely chuffed!

I'm also a big fan of vintage pillowcases; my favourite charity shops sell odd pillowcases for around 50p; not bad for about half a metre of fabric.

School dress; lots of lovely gingham!

And of course there are clothes! I have cut up lots of our old clothes; children's clothes are especially good as they often have smaller prints which look good on small scale projects such as applique. If you are a sentimental person (not me actually!) this can be a way of preserving memories of favourite clothes by re-using the fabrics to make something else. (And another great thing about cutting up clothes is that they usually come with free buttons!!)

Ladies cotton blouses

Little girl clothes

Men's shirts; sensible and lairy!

Have you made anything from upcycled fabric lately?

Still more letters!

Everyone loves my little name canvasses! (See the first lot here.)

It makes me feel very clever to have so many people ask me to make them something! I've made 16 names on canvas in the past fortnight - with another 7 on order to make next week!

I love making them because everyone is slightly different and if you've read this blog in the past you will know I hate making the same thing twice!!

I've listed them in my etsy shop and you can also contact me via Shazronnie makes stuff on facebook.

Linking up with Mum of all trades weekend blog hop!

More machine stitching on card!

For a new baby; the letters are made from felt, and the gingham fabric is upcycled from a school dress.

How to make a bag out of a pillowcase

This is one of my favourite upcycling projects. I'm sure there are lots of tutorials on t'internet about how to make a bag from a pillowcase. I'm not saying this is the best way, but this is the way I do it!

First you need a pillowcase; they are really easy to pick up in charity shops and I love the chintzy floral prints.

Then you need to chop it into pieces. 

The bottom piece is the main part of your bag - I measured this to be 18 inches deep.

The two smaller pieces will be the handles; mine are 3 inches deep.

(The top part is leftover; ideal scrap for applique and patchwork projects.)

Take your two handles and turn the ends under and pin.

I top stitch these together, rather than sewing it inside out then struggling to turn them back again.

Here they are all stitched, ready to attach onto the bag part.

Turn the bag part inside out (hopefully you've realised by this point that the beauty of using a pillow case is that it is almost a bag anyway!!) and turn over and iron the top edge down, slipping your handles under in the right place.

Stitch all around near the raw edge. (I cut mine with pinking shears to avoid fraying but you might need to do a double hem here.)

Then turn your bag the right way out and topstitch all around the top, making sure you go over the handles. This will give them extra strength and stop the top of your bag flopping over.

Ta-dah!

(And it folds up all teeny tiny so it's fab for popping in your handbag when out shopping.)

Quick card - handmade Thursday

For a special friend's wedding anniversary.

This is simply a fabric heart glued onto card, then I ran the sewing machine around it.

Easy, but I think it looks very effective.

More handmade Thursdays at white lily green.