Scrap bag fabric flower garland (Guest post from Moonfield Lane)

Thanks to Michele for filling in for me today and sharing her project with us! Check out her blog Moonfield Lane for more great decorating and project ideas!

Hi there! I'm Michele and I blog over at Moonfield Lane. I've been a fan of Erin's creativity for a long time, and I'm thrilled to guest post at Lansdowne Life while Erin cuddles her new baby girl.

Today (in honor of spring and baby girls) I'm going to show you how to make a flower garland from scrap fabric.

If you sew or if you've ever made fabric crafts, you probably have an assortment of fabric scraps already. If you don't, you can buy fat quarters cheaply at the fabric store, often bundled into coordinating prints.

You'll need:

• fabric scraps
• scissors
• cardstock and a pencil to make a pattern
• needle and thread
• twine
• hot glue gun

Before you start, I'd think about where you want to hang your garland, how long you want it to be and how many flowers you'll need. I hung my twine across my mantel before cutting it, allowing for drape. I then marked the middle of the twine, so that I could begin my flowers on either side of the mark. I also tried to get a visual idea of how many flowers I wanted and how I wanted them spaced. I ended up with 12 flowers on 7 feet of twine to hang on my 4 foot mantle.

Loosely draw and cut out three petal shaped circles on the cardstock, each one smaller than the other. These three petals make up one flower. Mine turned out to be about 2 3/4 inches, 2 1/4 inches and 1 3/4 inches respectively, but you don't need to be precise.

Decide on your fabrics and start cutting! I was able to cut through four folds of fabric at a time, making the process go a little faster. You'll need a flower on the front of your garland as well as a flower to glue on the back, meaning I created 24 flowers in all. So I cut 24 petals of each size and 72 all together. You'll want the flowers on the front and back, if not entirely the same, to at least sort of match.

As you're cutting your petals, lay them on top of one another the way you're going to sew them so you can visualize the finished flower and how your patterns look together. You can see in the photo that I frayed my edges a little by running my fingernails around the edge of each petal, pulling some of the loose threads.

Now it's time to sew! Start stitching about 1/4 the way through the smallest petal and go all the way around ending with your needle on the wrong side of the fabric (not like in the picture where the needle comes up through the correct side.)

Pull the needle and thread as tight as you can through the back (without breaking the thread!) as you would a drawstring bag. This creates the center of the flower. Tie a knot in the thread and cut it off. You may need to adjust the center a little until it looks right. You can stick something pointed through the back to sort of "fluff it up" if you need to.

After you've made your flowers, glue them to the twine. I just put a small blob of hot glue on a flower, laid the twine on the glue and pressed another flower on top.

Glue the flowers along the entire length of twine and you're done!

Thanks for having me, Erin!

About Michele from Moonfield Lane: I live in Virginia with my husband and our two wild and woolly little boys. I blog about home decor, crafts and chocolate, and much of my day is spent picking up Legos and cleaning up dirty footprints.

p.s. from Erin: Wouldn't these flowers also be super cute on little girls' hair clips? Might have to make some for my girls! Thanks again, Michele!

Coin purses: Cute gift card packaging

Sometimes giving gift cards can seem a little empty, but there are certain situations where they really are the best option. I wanted to give Elise's teachers gift cards for Christmas, so I decided to personalize the gift a bit by making some coin purses (similar to those I made for Elise's birthday party).

I used the same black and white striped fabric I used on my recent baby quilt and some pink cross-hatch fabric for the lining.

I had zippers on hand from my last go-around with coin purses and all the fabric as well, so these cost nothing to make. I think they'd price out between $1 and $2 each if you had to buy all the materials.

These really are so simple to make. I made them assembly-line style, but they probably only took around 20 minutes a piece. (Same as last time, I generally followed this tutorial at Noodlehead.) I even made an extra for myself!

Modern patchwork stripes twin quilt

Elise's quilt is finished! And I love it.

Elise loves it too. It's a twin size for her new big girl bed (more on that at a later date) and it ended up being 63.5" x 85" (post washing). I was aiming for a bit larger for each dimension, but it seems I always lose a few inches trimming it up at the end.

This Michael Miller Children at Play Balloons fabric inspired my color palette for the entire quilt. Pinks, corals, aquas, grays and white. I loved it the minute I saw it. 

I spent a lot of my life disliking things like hearts and pink, but now I find myself totally drawn to them. I guess that's what having a little girl will do to you! (Even if said little girl couldn't care less about such things.)

The squares started out 6"x6" (so 5.5" finished size) and the white stripes started out 4" high (3.5" high finished).

I used a mixture of designer prints and "non-designer" prints from the big fabric stores. Michael Miller is well represented here, but there are also souches of Anna Maria Horner and Riley Blake. And a few from Jo-Ann under the DS Quilts label. There's also one of those cheapie fat quarters rolls they sell for a buck in there, but I challenge you to figure out which one it is.

The solid white is Kona and the large swath of gray on the back is another solid quilting fabric, both from Jo-Ann.

Total time spent on this quilt was about 27-28 hours (spread out over a month or so). I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make another quilt this large until I have another kid to make it for! I'm ready to work on something with more immediate gratification!

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Other posts in this series:

1. Planning and cutting

2. Assembling the quilt top

3. Assembling the quilt back

4. Quilting

5. Binding

Another baby gift: Heart appliqued onesie

As a little extra to the baby quilt I showed you yesterday, I also made this appliqued heart onesie. Mama made a heart shirt for herself and I thought baby could use one to match.

I again faced my fears about stitching around the outside of the applique. It's not perfect, but that's OK. Emrbrace the messy!

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See also:

Quick applique tutorial

My first quilt: Modern green brick pattern

It was only a matter of time before I ventured into the world of quilting. I could only resist the allure of combining multitudes of printed fabrics for so long. But for a long time, I viewed quilting as sort of a secret club, filled with tradition and history.

But you know what? It's not. Quilting is just another hobby. Anyone's allowed to quilt. There's not a huge learning curve. If you have a working sewing machine and can sew a straight line, you're already half way there.

Sure, it requires a bit of math and can be time-consuming, but it shouldn't be intimidating, especially when tackling simple straight-line patterns.

Because this is my first quilt, I decided not get too fancy with the piecing pattern or the quilting itself. Instead, I wanted to play to my strengths which are a) coordinating prints and colors and b) creating a nice "randomization."

I stuck with a simple brick pattern based on this quilt I saw at Red Pepper Quilts. It looks a bit more complex than a basic square grid, but I don't think it was any more complicated to put together.

My "bricks" were 3" x 9" with a quarter-inch seam allowance, and I did 20 rows of bricks. The final size was approximately 39" x 50". At least that's what I planned; I forgot to take measurements of the finished product before gifting.

I machine sewed everything including the quilting and the binding. All the fabrics, the batting and threads I used were 100% cotton.

The recipient of this quilt is my friend Kim's baby boy-to-be. (Yes, my first quilt and it's not for my own child. Don't feel too sorry for her. Before she was born, she got not one, not two, not three, but SIX handmade quilts and blankets. She's not lacking in the blanket department.)

It's not perfect by any means. I'm not going to win any awards for my stitchery as you can see in the photo above. (Experienced quilters: please, try not to laugh.) But it was made with lots of love.

I'm already brewing up the next one in my brain and have started collecting fabrics. I'm thinking something girly for Elise in a twin size, but there are just too many options to pin it down any further!

Beginner quilting resources I found helpful:

The Practical Guide to Patchwork: New Basics for the Modern Quiltmaker*

Machine Quilt Binding 101 at Prudent Baby

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Geeky tote bag makeover (It's a TARDIS now!)

I have to laugh every time my husband takes a trip to the library with a teetering stack of books, DVDs and CDs in his arms. I've been telling him for months that a bag would make things much easier, but, you know, still no bag. I decided to make things easier for him and just make him a dedicated library bag. And then the best idea of all came to me: I had to make him a TARDIS bag.

For the un-initiated, the TARDIS is the travelling time machine in the shape of an old school British Police Box from the geeky sci-fi show Dr. Who. We are fans.

I went rummaging through my fabric stash, but came up short on "manly" fabrics. I was determined not to spend any money to make this and forced myself to work with what I already had in the house. Then I remembered I had a giveaway tote bag buried in a closet.

I'm not fond of sporting large logos, so it never saw much use. But the thing about logos like this is that you can cover them up. So with the bag already "done," all I had to do was decorate it.

The TARDIS is tall and skinny, so I created a cropped design to ensure my logo was fully covered. I found a photo on the internet for reference on the general shape and dimensions, but in the end I sort of just sketched out the silhouette on my own. I tried my hardest not to make this bag look too cute, but it was hard. Tote bags by nature are not exactly masculine.

I created a giant applique with some blue plaid fabrics from a couple of Dan's old dress shirts. (He busted through the elbows Incredible Hulk-style on three different shirts in like a month's time. Weird but true.) Overall, the shirts themselves were in good condition (except for the sleeves, of course), so plenty of useable fabric.

I did a zig zag stitch around all the edges. I let go of the idea that this stitching had to be perfect, and I'm really happy I went ahead with it. The messy look goes with the design. I'm sure it would have been a lot easier to do on a single piece of flat fabric, rather than pushing and pulling the whole bag through the sewing machine.

For the lettering, I used the font Gill Sans (the closest match I could find to the original) and printed it on iron-on transfer paper. I've worked with these plenty of times in the past with no issues, but this time, the iron-ons weren't sticking and looked splotchy. I'm not sure what went wrong, maybe the transfers were old, maybe it was the linen fabric I used for the background, but things were not working well.

I had printed doubles of all the words (just in case something got screwed up... ha), so I decided to apply a second transfer on top of the first. I figured I couldn't make it look any worse. I was a little bit off of the alignment, at first on accident and then on purpose. I think the double impression ended up looking great, though. Even better than if they had come out perfectly the first time.

The TARDIS has a blue light on the top and I was lucky enough to find this old blue button in my button jar to represent that. It has a reflective quality that makes it look like it's lighting up, which is kind of cool.

On the reverse side of the tote, I went with a simpler design -- just a thin band of linen to cover up the logo.

I hope Dan can tolerate the extra layer of geekiness added onto his library trips. He told me he was becoming more comfortable publicly embracing his geeky side, so I think he'll be OK.

Are you sitting on a giveaway/logo-ed item that you'd rather not use as is? What are you waiting for? Give it a makeover!

Pin It

See also:
Quick applique tutorial

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This is part of my 2011 Handmade Gift Challenge.

Upcycled baby food jar ornaments: 12 ideas to try

If you're a crafty hoarder like me, it's possible you have a few baby food jars stowed away (even if your "baby" isn't a baby anymore). They are just too cute to recycle! They beg to be used for something awesome. (If you don't have baby food jars, you might have other small glass jars from spices or condiments that would work too.)

You've probably seen those clear glass ball ornaments that you can fill with whatever. Well, consider these clear ornaments you don't have to buy. Plus, they have much wider mouths than the glass bulbs so you can fit all sorts of things inside.

I had a couple of different sizes of baby food jars plus a lone glass spice jar in my stash. To prep them, I soaked off the labels, removed any residual glue and cleaned and dried the glass really well, scrubbing off any printed-on numbers that might be on the outside.

Next, I painted the lids. Spray paint is probably the best option here for good coverage. I used a champagne/gold color, but you could use whatever you might have.

Then the hunt was on to find things to fill the jars. I scrounged the house and found lots of options. Here are some ideas!

Scraps of wrapping paper, scrapbook paper or bits of old Christmas cards

Ribbons, yarn or fabric scraps

Jingle bells or snippets of garlands

Mini ball ornaments (how meta)

Elements of nature (twigs, acorns, pine cones, etc.)

Craft supplies (beads, small wood cutouts, foam shapes)

Photos or other keepsakes (wedding invites, baby announcements like I made here)

When you're done filling, pop the lid back on and tie a ribbon or piece of string around the neck of the jar and you're done! Easy!

You can fill them with anything, but I urge you to poke around your house before buying fillers. Just make sure it's nothing too heavy; the glass jars are semi-heavy already (though no heavier than many store-bought ornaments) and you probably don't want to weigh them down too much if you're going to hang them on the tree.

It's inexplicable, but sometimes things just look cooler in jars. I loved a couple of them so much, they made it into my current mantel display. 

But the very best thing about this idea? Nothing is permanent! You can take everything apart when Christmas is over or if you're tired of it. Love that.