At the moment I feel like reusing and recycling as much as I can. So here I made a cardboard shoulder bag which is surprisingly sturdy and cost me very little to make.
I waxed the card and varnished the paper for protection, so hopefully, I can use it for a some time.
I threaded it with paper string to stay with the theme. The lining is from my spray painting tank tops projects, I wrote about them here and here. The bag won first price in the cardboard contest on instructable.com, so exciting.
I didn’t know how beautiful leather rings look on your fingers until I made a few. Once again I was looking at stuff floating around in my craft room trying to come up with ideas of what to make with things I’ve already got.
I love working with leather and exploring ways to decorate it. Here I chose the ancient technique of batik using wax and dye to make a colourful leather wallet.
Here is another sneak peek into my now really soon to be available e-book “How To Make Unique Leather Sandals”. I finished the book itself and am now working on creating a landing page. It’s all new to me, so it’s taken me some time to find out exactly what I needed to do to self-publish an e-book.
I’m getting there now, a bit late for the summer in the northern hemisphere, but think of all the summers still to come…
The above sandals are the first project of the book, they are easy to make as there are no straps to cut or buckles to attach, and they offer lots of space for decoration….
Here are sneak peeks 1 and 2 of the sandal making book.
The e-book How to make unique leather sandals is available now. This link leads you to a post I wrote about it when I published the book.
I must confess I have a huge collection of fabric scraps. Every once in a while I get a bag out and think I have to make something out of them or why am I keeping them. Clothes for little ones are a great way to use up fabric scraps as you don’t need as much fabric.
The t-shirt is hand sewn, with the seems on the outside for extra interest. I used five different colours of organic cotton jerseys from Organic Textile Company.
I don’t want to make clothes that look like I bought them in a shop. I want my second skin look hand-made and unique. One way of achieving this is printing my own fabric. Wood block printing is probably the easiest and simplest printing method of all.
I made these fun harem pants for my little boy, they are the cutest pants ever! I love fun clothes for boys, playful and colourful, have done with the grey and dark blue…
Embroidery on clothes is a wonderful way to embellish plain clothes or fabrics. Once you know a few embroidery stitches, you can transform a boring piece of clothing into something awesome and very special.
Compared to other craft forms, embroidery doesn’t require much tools or materials. All you need is thread, a hoop, a needle, some scissors, a tailors pencil for drawing a design onto the fabric or some transfer material if you want to transfer images to fabric.
Why not design your own unique t-shirts? Now that I have started I don’t want to do anything else this summer! A pity summer in the UK just doesn’t last long enough!
Of course, there are many ways to decorate a t-shirt. Here I used stencil printing to transfer a design onto fabric. It’s an easy and simple printing technique that can produce stunning results.
I remember the days when I went from shop to shop to find a pair of trousers that were beautiful and fitting, it could take me hours to finally end up exhausted with something quite expensive and nearly always a compromise. I’m so glad I don’t have to do that anymore.
I learned to make proper trousers (I mean the ones with zips, pockets and belt loops) with this book Sew U: The Built by Wendy Guide to Making Your Own Wardrobe, which has detailed instructions on all the steps involved in creating the trousers. I’ve used this pattern for years, only changing the width of the legs from the knees down, I like legs that flare at the ankles…
The fabric I used is from Dragonfly Fabrics, it’s a linen/rayon mix called Brussels Washer, I chose the colour ocean, there are many more colours available.