Repurposed school clothes-hair clips and slides

R has grown out of last summers school uniform dresses.  Being in the UK the dresses themselves had not seen an awful lot of wear (though not as little as this year!) but the school does not have a "swap-shop" where items like these can be passed onto others.  Instead of sending them to the charity shop I decided to reuse the fabric and my newly learned crochet skills to make some hair clips for R.

These caused such a stir at school that I used all the fabric making a batch to sell at the school summer fair next week.  Normally something like this sells for about £2-2.50 in the shops; I'm going to charge just £1 and we'll see if they go, as a bonus R gets to earn a number skills Brownie badge if she helps with the change.  All we need now is good weather!






Update - all we needed was parents of children at the school to volunteer to man the stalls ready for the crowds; unfortunately this did not happen, only 3 people volunteered (of which I was one) and so it has been cancelled.  The cynic in me says that the first people who will complain that school trips and swimming are too expensive this coming school year are going to be those who wouldn't donate even half an hour of their time to help with what is for the school the biggest fundraiser of the year.  Here's hoping we can recoup the loss somehow!

Sewing Practice : Hair clips and bird feeders

R has started to really get into sewing.  This is a good thing but I am too often unavailable to help due to the boys.  These are some projects that we have managed to do together recently though.

First felt hair clips (barrettes?)- just some of the designs we have made.

These are dead easy to make.  First take your hair clip and place it on top of the felt you intend to use.  Cut a rectangle that is slightly larger than the clip.  Cut another that is the same size, you should now have one piece for the front and one for the back.  Take the front piece and decorate with cut out pieces of felt, beads, sequins, embroidery stitches, buttons, in fact anything you fancy.  The only thing that dictated what I used was that it had to be SEWN onto the piece of felt so that it would stand up to being worn more than once.  Take the piece of felt for the back and using the clip as a guide cut a slit in the felt for the back of the clip to slip through (using felt means that this won't fray).  Feed the "arm" of the clip through the slot and fasten as normal to hold it in place.  Match up the the front and back pieces so the edges match, the decoration should be on the top and the front of the original hairclip inside the "felt sandwich".  Sew the front and back together using a blanket stitch or running stitch.  Done!

The other needle and thread practice we have been doing is threading monkey nuts onto thread using a needle.  We also made a popcorn one (which was much easier, unroasted monkey nut shells are harder than I thought) but since it is also B's favourite snack it turned into a B feeder rather than a bird feeder!  Here is the feeder as hung on the tree and photographed by R.

Kids costumes: superhero

A's favourite dressing up costume of the moment.
The basic cape is made the same way as R's flower cape but left plain.
The next thing we did was to create a "zorro" style mask with eye holes that tied round A's head. (Basically one long strip.) This worked OK but kept rolling up so I decided we needed a cap bit for the top.
First I took a paper plate and drew round it onto the fabric.
I then cut this out and then folded it half and cut to give 2 semi-circles.
I then measured the curved edge of the semi-circles and cut a strip that was this long and a couple of inches wide.
I then sewed one long edge of the strip to the curved edge of first semi-circle. The other long edge of the strip gets sewn to the second semi-circle and you are left with a basic cap.
We then took the "zorro mask" and sewed it along the bottom edge of the cap (leaving the long tails to knot at the back so it fits your superheros properly).
Add extra decoration to the costume if you can get your superhero to stop saving the world long enough!

Kids costumes: flower cape

With the Easter holidays upon us and the older children at home for the week I have decided to post how we made some costumes for them to play with last half term holiday. The first one was for R. It is an easy peasy flower cape/wings from my fabric stash.
Making a cape is dead simple. It is a rectangle or semi-circle of fabric with a smaller semi-circle cut out for the neck and something to fasten it round the kids neck with.
This one is a semi-circle.
First measure your child armspan. (I'll call this A)
Half measurement A (call this measurement B)
You want to start with a rectangle of fabric that is B wide by A long. I made my life easier by using a nylon fabric that won't fray so no hems!
Fold this in half along its length to give a square.
Using a push-pin and some string make a "compass". Place the push pin on the fold at the top and draw a quarter circle with a radius A. Cut this out (when you open your fabric back out you should have a semi-circle).
Keep the fabric folded for now as you mark out the semi-circle for the neck. You can use the same compass method but I used a small paper plate folded into quarters to give me the outline for the neck hole. Be careful less is more here the semi-circle has a smaller diameter than you think; remember you can always make it bigger later.
Take a length of ribbon that will go round the neck hole with about 10 inches to spare at either end of the neck. Sew this to the neck using a zigzag stitch so that the "tails" hang down evenly either side.
You now have a basic cape (ready for your basic superhero :) ) R wanted something more so having extra ribbon in our stash, we embellished.
First I used a paper plate to mark and cut some scallops along the bottom edge (we did six even curves).
I sewed ribbon on to define each "petal" as you can see in the photo.
We then added loops of ribbon so they came halfway down her lower arm so that when she moves the cape acts more like wings.
Add the tiara and tah-dah one flower fairy and one happy girly.

Jeans Bag

These were R's favourite jeans. Even though they were too small she still wore them round the house. Eventually however they had holes in the knees too so we decided that we would use the patterned bit (which was R's favourite bit) as a panel on a bag.

First we cut the lower leg off a pair of my old jeans opened it out and squared it off to give a rectangle.
Then we cut the patterned bit off R's jeans and sewed it onto the rectangle with a zigzag stitch.

Then we folded the rectangle right sides together and sewed down the long side (opposite the fold) and across the bottom to make the main body of the bag. We then turned the bag right sides out and folded the raw edge to the inside to make a top hem.

Then I took the leg of my jeans and cut a strip 4 inches wide and as long as possible. Fold the raw edges to the middle and then fold in half again to make a strip 1 inch wide with the raw edges enclosed. Sew down the length of the strip. Sew the strip to the top of the bag to make a shoulder strap.

Done!

Bean Bags

This was a project we made during half term holiday. My daughter wanted to help with some sewing, my son wanted to do throwing things so we combined the two and made these easy peasy bean bags.

You will need a rectangle of fabric about twice as high as it is wide - ours measured 10 cm x 20 cm. We chose split peas to fill the bags with but rice, barley or lentils would have worked as well.

Fold the fabric in half right sides together so you have a square. Sew down the edge opposite the fold using a quarter inch seam. You should have a tube.

Turn the tube inside out. Along one of the raw edges turn a quarter of an inch "hem" to the inside of the tube. Sew a line of topstitching along this edge so you now have a pocket.

Fill the bag with your chosen "beans", do not fill it too full or you won't be able to fit it under your presser foot!

Turn a hem to the wrong side on the remaining raw edge and topstitch shut. This seam should be 90 degrees to the other end seam as you can see in the photo - not matching the direction of the other end seam like making a pillow; this gives a chunkier bean bag which is easier for little people to catch.

The whole thing takes less than 10 minutes to put together. The pile you can see here took about half an hour. All you need to do now is invent some bean bag games to play!