Mum’s floral overnight bag
I haven’t posted for a while so here’s some pics of this large bag I made ages ago for my mum.
The bag base was originally cut smaller than this. I had a small scrap of floral fabric from Nana’s stash that I wanted to use for the flower shapes, utilizing as much of the piece as possible. After building up the layers underneath the flowers grew in size and I knew I would have to re-cut the bag to fit them on without looking all squashed up.
This one is a photo of mum wearing it so you can see the scale.
A glimpse of my work-in-progress
This is something I have been working on for a while now. Almost done, just got to do a few more fabric roses.
The peach fabric used in the photo above are the leftover pieces from the skirt I shortened here.
It’s turned out very differently from my original idea but still very pretty all the same. Can you guess what it is?
At last – pictures of the fairy princesses
Remember all those frilly girly things I made for my nieces for Christmas? Well, I finally got some pictures of them all wearing the outfits. At Easter! The sun was very bright which is why some of the expressions are not very fairy princess like 
Here is Alyssa who is wearing a beaded necklace I made for her a few years ago and had completely forgotten about:
Next Rylee, squinting very badly, she was having a good time, honest!
And lastly Briana. Her bag is from an op shop, I re-covered the back. I love the fact that she is wearing tattoos on her arms LOL, drawn on by her dad.
The tops they are wearing are all bought from op shops and inspired the rest of the outfits. Alyssa’s one is a bit see through so she is wearing a T-shirt underneath with a butterfly print. Pretty!
Fancy handbag part two
We’ve had a busy couple of weeks here getting organized to go to our friends wedding last weekend. We had to travel a long way, 7hrs drive to the grandparents, chit chat and drop off kids, next day another 3hrs to where we are staying. Keith is the official photographer and wants to go to the rehearsal which we miss, never mind we still get to go over venue for photo opportunities. Wedding day starts off with bad weather and photographer is worried, but clears up in time for ceremony and turns out great. And he got some lovely photos, good job dear!
Next two days are spent traveling home again, its now 4 days later and we’re still not fully unpacked. I have a huge mountain of washing to sort and fold up and the boys are running out of clothes.
Good news, got the bag finished in time to take to the wedding. Well, just, I left off any type of fastening and didn’t have time to pin stitch the flap.
I had to sew the lining twice due to doing it wrong way around with interlining on the inside (the wrong side!) the first time, whoops.
My second go
Had lots of fun with the trimmings on the front flap. Stage one, the net over lay.
Next, the ribbon and cord trimming.
Yo yo’s
Fabric roses
Then beaded loops and we’re done. And the final finished product!
I was careful to get the lining of the flap with the picture up the right way when the bag is open.
Here I am wearing it at the wedding with my matching dress, a birthday gift from Mum.
And a close up of the flap, for those like me who strain their eyes and put their noses to the screen to take in the details,
I love my new little bag, can’t wait to take her out again
Fancy handbag – a work in progress
I am currently in the process of making a handbag to take to a wedding this month. The fabric I’m using is from my Nana’s stash, and just happens to be the exact shade of turquoise as the dress I want to wear (a birthday present from my mum, thanks Mum!). For the lining I am using a lovely vintage cotton print that was also in my Nana’s stash (thanks Nana!). Some of it was already cut out into a shape that looked like a little girls dress, with button up straps. I had often wondered who Nana was making the dress for, and why it was never finished. When I asked Mum about this and she said she thought it may have been for me. I’m going to smile and think of my Nana every time I open this bag.
So far I have cut all the pieces out and sewed the main pieces together, boxing out the bottom.
During the school holidays I also spent a bit of time making all these little fabric flowers and yo yo’s that are going to be stitched on the front flap.
Fairy flower circlet and headband
I’m still here, still sewing just slowed down a bit over Christmas.
This is the flower circlet headdress I made for one of my nieces, to go with the pink ruffled skirt.
I started off with a wire base and covered it with some ribbon (glued on) leaving a trail of ribbon on each end to tie on her head.
I made some tulle roses from scrap left over from the skirt and glued these on the base, then pulled apart some artificial silk flowers and glued the petals in the gaps.
Here I am trying to model it while taking a photo!
I also made a headband for her to wear when a dress-up one would be inappropriate, like school. I used a plain plastic band from the $2 shop and glued on a pink ribbon, then a tulle flower and yo-yo made from the skirt fabric. The ribbon is a little crooked as you can see, next time I think I’ll wrap the ribbon around the band rather than try to get it straight!
Hand bag for Briana
When my 5 year old niece Briana saw her sister designing a bag to be made by me, of course she wanted one too. Her design was not as detailed as Alyssa’s, but she was very certain that it was to be pink. The drawing she did was hard to see so I haven’t posted it. She said “I want it a pink square bag, with one handle and lots of flowers like Nan’s (referring to a bag I made for my Mother), all pink”.
I just so happened to have a pinkish denim skirt with a ruffled hem that I got from an op shop with the intention of turning it into skirt, so I used that as the base and rifled through my scrap stash – I keep everything – for pink bits for the flowers.
Here is the finished bag.
I cut out 2 rectangle shapes as big as I could fit into the skirt panels, sorry I didn’t take any before pics 
it was a straight paneled skirt with a shaped hem.
I stitched these together and boxed out the bottom by sewing a triangle across the the corners ( I promise to take lots of pictures next time and do a tutorial!) and used the ruffle on the hem to trim the top edge.
I used the reverse side of the skirt fabric to cut 3 of the applique flower shapes and some pink cotton to do the other 3. For the floating flowers, I made 3 from floral cotton scraps and 3 from very special pink taffeta lining and pink floral nylon scraps, saved from a dress that my Nana made and wore to a wedding. I stitched beads in the centre to secure the flowers, this is the same technique I used on my denim jeans skirt.
I cut the strap as long as I could get it but it was still a little short, so I lengthened it by adding two strips to each end in lieu of a D ring. This left a funny looking gap. As I was wondering what I could do to fix this, I saw some pink and purple feathers in my pile of ‘pink stuff’ and remembered something Gok had done to a bag with feathers and beads. Ah ha!
I stitched the feathers to the back of the strap and used a hot glue gun to secure them properly, with a piece of ribbon over the top to look pretty. Glue is pretty ugly even on the back of something. Then I added some beads on the front side.
How to make flowers from fairy skirt circles
I was inspired by these gorgeous felt flowers made by Koala Brains
and it gave me an idea of how to use up all those leftover circles you get after cutting out circular/fairy skirts.
I will show you how I did mine, with 5 petals. My method is a little different, after having a play around I found this was the best way with larger circles, in flimsy fabrics. The size of flower you end up with depends on the size of your circle.
1. Find centre of circle by folding in half, then in half again. Mark with chalk on the wrong side of fabric.
2. Mark a line from the centre of circle to the outer edge.
3. Mark 4 more lines from the centre evenly spaced around the circle. This will involve some maths.
360 degrees divided by 5 petals = 72 degrees.
I used a protractor to measure 72 degrees between each line.
5. Cut thread at least 20cm longer than the width of your circle and thread onto a needle. Secure thread at the edge of circle and sew/tack along line to the centre.
6. Leave a tail approx 10cm long, or if you have 5 needles available to use, just leave the needle on.
7. Repeat with other 4 lines.
8. Pull threads one at a time and stitch to secure in the centre with a knot. Be careful not to tangle the needles!
9. Secure and cut threads, turn over to right side. Ta da!
Now you can have fun with them by cutting some circles smaller and layering the flowers.
Make a fairy hair clip/barrette by attaching a hair clip finding, or a brooch by attaching to a pin-back or…
Jeans skirt refashion
Some of my friends will remember seeing this skirt before:
I made this about two years ago, from an old pair of jeans that I didn’t wear anymore. I was inspired by some original looking skirts I saw online made from jeans combined with other fabrics and decided to have a go at the jeans to skirt transformation myself.
There are many sites out there with tutorials that will show you how to turn jeans into a skirt with some slight variations, basically you cut the legs to the length required, cut or unpick the inner leg seams up to the crotch, then a little bit further up the front and back seams, overlap the top bits so they sit flat and then stitch in a triangle panel to fill in the gap. You can also cut up the side seams if you wish and insert panels for extra flare at the sides.
For more details check out Busy Parents online or this site with instructions from five other websites, or try this video if you like more visual instructions.
For my skirt, I decided lots of flowers up one side would be something different and add a bit of personality.
I made some patterns in varying sizes of my chosen motif – a five petal flower, and chose some red scrap fabrics with differing textures – plain cotton, printed, velvet and satin to make the flowers.
I appliqued some of the flower shapes onto the skirt and used others to make floating shapes to layer on top for a more textured look.
Some of the flowers were attached by sewing white flower and red seed beads in the centre and others were attached by sewing on some red tulle roses that I had made for another project many years ago.
I enjoy wearing my one of kind skirt to different occasions, and it certainly gets noticed!
