Pillow from scrap fabric

When no longer needed, I think baby blankets make useful fabric pieces to make into other things and this fuzzy blue giraffe blanket just begged to be made into a soft pillow.  First, I embellished one side with some left over brown satin ribbon from the stash pile of fabric and findings that accumulates each time I do a clear-out of a closet or drawer.  I used brown ribbon as this blue pillow was to be paired with another pillow, also brown.  Putting right sides together, I then stitched three and a half sides, leaving half a side open for later insertion of the pillow stuffing.  After turning to right side out, I squeezed in the pillow stuffing (acquired on sale at in Walmart), then hand-stitched the opening and lo and behold, had another cute pillow for my son's bed. This project took hardly any time at all as I did the laundry at the same time, making for a very productive Monday morning.

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!