Blue Jean Bag Gets Blinged Up With Shiny Buttons

This is another blue jean bag I stitched out of old jeans but this time I blinged it up with some of the buttons I seem to have accumulated lately. I just hacked off the leg pieces from a pair of discarded blue jeans, and cut out the zipper placket part and stitched it together. I specifically made the side seams of the jeans the center line on each "front side of the bag so it would look less like the top of a pair of ole blue jeans!  I also lined the bag with a scrap of bright colored polyester material I'd been given when someone cleaned out their fabric stash. I then added a zipper across the top of the lining "bag" to make the blue jean bag more useful and secure.
The easiest way to put the zipper in was to stitch the zipper in the lining first and then stitch the lining itself together and then put the lining into the bag after the lining was sewn together. I just had to be sure I kept the right side of the lining facing inward!  And where I had difficulty sewing the lining "bag" into the top seam area where the fabric is thickest, such as where the handles were stitched on, I used the hot glue gun instead rather than busting my sewing machine!  I also used the hot glue gun to stick on all the shiny buttons I decorated this with.  It seemed I'd accumulated a lot of shiny buttons from my mother's house when we cleaned it out after she died, and also another seamstress (sewciopath!) had handed off to me her supply of extra buttons.  So I found sets of shiny buttons and arranged them on somewhat haphazardly but following the seam lines.  It's a great shoulder bag and I've been using it a lot and get a lot of compliments about it!

Zippered Bag Made from Old Blue Jeans and Scrap Fabric

Determined to bust through some of those blue jeans sitting in my fabric stash awaiting re-use and recycling, I ran up this zippered bag on the sewing machine last month. It's your basic blue jean bag made out of the top of a pair of elasticized waist pants, added a zipper and lining with pockets and put on a shoulder strap. I just cut off the pants legs and stitched two pieces together after re-seaming the curved seams into straight seams. Before adding the lining, I stitched on a couple of floral scrap fabric pieces to decorate it a bit.  I made a complete other bag to insert as a liner and which included some pockets and pouches. The liner was also made of some scrap fabric I'd accumulated. The lining's interior pockets and pouches were cut right out of other fabric from my recycle stash. So they just were stitched into or onto the lining.  I also had an unused heavy zipper and put that across the top to make this bag closable and more usable. The shoulder strap was also just another piece of blue jeans from the legs, just cut and stitched into a long ribbon and then turned right sides out before stitching into the bag between the lining and bag exterior.
This bag has become a great extra travel bag for us as it's squishy and fits on the plane floor or in the bus or train overhead bin easily.  We've used it for all kinds of things like snacks and medications, or suntan lotion, or books and papers, you know, that stuff you just gotta carry with you that you don't want to check or pack in your fancy suitcase. And it's washable!

Little Girl's Pillowcase Dress

I'd read about making a little girl's dress from an old pillowcase on Pinterest and other websites so I decided I just had to try one and it came out all right, don't you think? I found a pillowcase in the closet that didn't seem to have a mate -- another one of those things that disappear in the laundry. Once I figured out the heavy end seam was the bottom of the dress, I then cut along the top and cut out the arm holes.  I quickly trimmed the armholes and then turned over the top with a large seam that could hold a ribbon.  Since I'm working on busting through my bag of scrap fabrics, I found this rather pretty pink satin fabric that was once the lining to a jacket, and stitched into a long tube that became the ribbon. I then threaded this ribbon through the top seam and eh voila, pillow case dress! I added on a little pocket using the leftover fabric from the arm hole cut out and stitched it as a patch pocket right onto the dress, using some pink zigzagging as decoration.
Overall, I was quite happy with how it came out and was very pleased when a little 7 year old girl came by and when I showed it to her she said she wanted it!  I adjusted the tie ribbon for her height and she said she was going to use it as a night dress!  I am so pleased to have done this project but just a little miffed with myself for not taking of photo of the little girl in the dress, er, nightgown!

Book Tote Bag Made from Scrap Fabric

This past year I decided to bust my pile of scrap fabrics and unfinished sewing projects and this book tote bag was among the first to be finished.  The green fabric is from an old pair of jeans, lined with some dress fabric I found in the trash, and decorated with some old floral sheet material. To get the basic green fabric I just cut the jeans legs off and opened the seams and created panels that I then stitched together. Before putting in the lining, I cut out squares and circles of the floral sheet material and stitched them on as decoration, using red thread and the zig-zag stitch setting. I also created two handles making ribbons and then stitched them inside before adding the pink check lining.  This  makes a great bag to keep and carry library books in and although I haven't done this yet, I know it's washable!
As you can probably tell, I don't spend a lot of time measuring and patterning and cutting things exactly, but rather do a lot by eye and as the mood strikes me, to give the whole thing a bit of a hobo feel. If it looked manufactured, it wouldn't be home-made, would it?