A toothpaste tube toothbrush holder. Love it.

From Crafting a Green World.

Recycled Crafts

While we’re waiting for this baby to make his or her appearance, I’m keeping busy with more crafts, but I am limiting the time I spend in my office, which is really really nice. At the present time, I am working on making pants and soakers from old sweaters, and getting at least that part of my inventory restocked for January.

And then today, I found several cool websites that talk about recycled crafts…

Amy Quarry shares some of her favorite old clothes into new things projects. (And I swear that giant tub of old clothes in my office WILL be made into new projects some day.)

Here is a bathmat tutorial for those of you with lots of time on your hands.

For those of you who own wine bottles, this is a fun idea for a wine rack.

And the old standby Make Stuff has a whole page of recycled craft ideas.

Bug Glasses!

We borrowed a Bug Crafts book from the library, and Wally quickly picked out two projects to make first. Clothespin Dragonflies (no picture, sorry!) and these Bug Glasses.

He was a bit distraught when I cut up his paint kit to make the glasses, but we routinely give our egg cartons back to the farm we get the eggs from, and the paint kit was the only egg carton we had in the house. He recovered quickly, though.

I will say, I’m so happy that Wally finally is starting to enjoy actual crafting activities. I’ve always looked forward to doing crafts with my kids, but until recently, he could not be bothered. Suddenly, though, he loves creating things. Yay!

Reclaimed Totes

These have been cut out for a while, but I finally pulled them out to sew them up for Craft Saturday next weekend. I think they’re fun. Not only do they use 100% reclaimed materials (except the thread), but they’re kind of geek cool, as well. I used mostly old Tshirts from a box of clothes that no longer fit my husband.

Completed Project/WIP: T-shirt Quilt

Someone gave me a bunch of used Tshirts a few years ago, and then I’ve of course added to that pile with our own old Tshirts, but I had no idea what I was planning to do with them. I’ve slowly found uses for the fronts, and thrown away the fronts that were too worn out to be reused.

From the parts that were left, I cut out a bunch of squares – bigger squares (11×11) for a quilt and smaller squares to replenish our family wipe stash.

But while I was cutting the quilt squares, I lost count and ended up with more squares than I needed for the twin-size quilt I was making. So I made this smaller throw first. I’m actually quite pleased with how it turned out, and it wasn’t hard. This is my first quilt. Yay me!

I have the top done for the twin size, too, and I’ll be backing that with a vintage cotton, but that’s still in my WIP pile.

Christmas Crafts

 

This year, again, we’re going 100% homemade for Christmas presents. Here’s the first batch of gifts, all finished and ready to go. I even have the fabric gift bags done, though those are not pictured here. (But you can see them here. I’m swiping the SpongeBob and Scooby ones for these presents.)

First, raw-edge applique Tshirts for all of the kids in the family, except one teenage boy, who we deemed to be too cool for such a gift.

This is for Paige, my sister’s teenage daughter. I think it’s really cute! An interesting side note, I get Paige’s hand-me-downs. The child is very very tall and so beautiful. This is actually not raw-edge applique like the others. I mounted the circles to a separate piece of fabric, put them BEHIND the tshirt, sewed around the circles, then cut out the red Tshirt to expose the circles. I found myself mulling over whether this would work one day while driving, and am pleased to report that it turned out really good!

Yoda for my youngest nephew. I used white flannel on a black Tshirt and I think it looks nice. I hope it stays that way!! The pig is for neice #2, who likes pigs. She’s starting to outgrow the pig obsession a bit, but I couldn’t resist this cute clipart pig for her.

Flowers are for neice #1, I thought they were cute and without being too cutesy. The ballerina is for her sister, neice #3.

This flower is for Paige, I thought she needed two Tshirts. The elphant is for Wally. It’s a size 4/5, so it should fit him for a looooong time!

Next: Pillowcases. Pillowcases are fun, right? And they’re easy. I made all of these with French seams, so there are no raw or serged edges sticking out. They’re oversize, to make it easier for children to get their pillows in.

Hannah Montana for neice #1, who L-O-V-E-S this show. Lizzie McGuire for her sister, neice #3. There are iron-ons I made from images I swiped from the Disney website. I hope they last!

Star Wars for both nephews. Though they are about 5 years apart in age, they both love Star Wars.

Tink for Paige, and Bratz for neice #2. This was a toughie for me, as I hate Bratz because they’re whores. But she really loves Bratz, and her mom suggested Bratz, and didn’t really have any other suggestions. I struggled with this, but ultimately decided that if I want others to respect what we suggest for Wally’s gifts, I need to respect what they suggest.

So there you have it. It feels good to have these done. It took, all told, about a day and a half of work, a nice diversion from diaper sewing.

As a side note, I bought all of the Tshirts secondhand. Most of them came from the Salvation Army (and are all brand names like Gap and Abercrombie), the ones for Paige came from Once Upon A Child. They were the most expensive, at $2.50 each. The others were all $1 each. The fabric for the appliques themselves was all stuff I had onhand, scraps I’d been saving over the years. So, average Tshirt cost: $1.43

The pillowcases are all new material. I purchased the fabrics over the course of a few weeks using 50% coupons. The Bratz fabric was on clearance (go figure) for $1 a yard, and the Tink and Star Wars fabrics were the most expensive at $5.99 a yard (minus 50% makes it $3 a yard). The solids were all $.50-$1 per yard after coupon and discounts. Each pillowcase takes about a yard of fabric. Even after factoring in $2 for the 2 sheets of iron-on transfer paper, the average pillowcase cost is $1.91.

So, there you go. Presents for all but one of my neices and nephews for an average of $3.34 per child. (The oldest nephew will be getting a pillowcase, and then I’m going to make him candy like I’m making for all the adult men.)