Make a Plastic Grocery Bag Holder

I am always getting more plastic bags from the grocery and I didn't really like any of the bag holders I've seen at the store. I wanted a cute way to keep them in check. This little bag holder is so easy to sew. All you need is a rectangle of fabric (or a cute dish towel would be perfect!), some elastic and a button(this is really optional. I wanted to be able to open and close the handle on my bag so I used a button.).  I figured there is no need to reinvent the wheel, so here is a link to a tutorial to sew a bag holder for yourself. If you have any questions please feel free to shoot me an email or post a comment.

Pants Repurposed into Purse

I love to sew and I especially love to repurpose old things into something new. A few weeks ago I was over at Made it on Monday and I saw her really cute pants transformed into a purse and I couldn't resist making one for myself. It is really not that hard. I cut a pair of pants all the way up the inseam on both sides and then used the fabric for my purse parts, and I used the old pants waistline for my purse strap. You can use an old purse as your pattern outline, or just wing it and cut as you go.

Then, to line the purse I used a shirt that I don't wear anymore. I tried to get a picture of the lining, but it came out too grainy. I know you all know what the lining of a bag looks like anyway.

For the little fabric flowers, cut strips of old tee shirt and then cut a circle in your desired flower size and just twist the flower into shape and glue it to your circle with the glue gun. You should make one of these. Its so fun to see your pants and shirt get turned into a purse!

Bean Bag Tutorial

This year I'm homeroom mom for my son's kindergarten class. We are always looking for cheap party games, and we decided to do a bean bag toss as one of the halloween party games.  The bean bags are so simple to make. I wanted to share it, because my little boy is having lots of fun playing with the bean bags just around the house. And even if you just use them for a party it only cost 75 cents for the fabric and just a little while to make the bags.

What you need to make them:
1/4 yard of fabric
a bag of beans or rice (for filling the bean bags)
thread

First, cut your fabric. I cut mine across horizontally and then cut each of those strips into rectangles. Mine turned out to be 10 rectangles- each 4.5x5.5 inches.

Put 2 rectangles right sides facing each other and sew along 2 long sides and an end, leaving one end open so that you can put in the beans.

After you have the 3 sides sewn, turn the bag inside out (or should that be right sides out?) so you can see the right side of the fabric.

Next, fill the bag with 3 tablespoons of beans. This is great part to involve a little helper.

Time to clean up the beans you spilled all over the sewing machine trying to take a picture and fill the bag at the same time.

Once the bag is filled, tuck in the raw edges on top, folding them in towards the wrong side of the fabric.

Hold or pin the edges shut and sew along all 4 sides of the bag.

All done!

We're using buckets decorated with  jack-o-lantern faces to toss the bean bags into, but  you could use boxes or anything you can think of.