Drawstring Bag from an Outgrown T-shirt (tutorial)

This was literally a ten minute project. I'm sure that there are tons of little things you could do to fancy it up, but I didn't want fancy this time.

The Little Man has tons of toys. Tons. One of them is this great peg board, which has provided him with hours of entertainment.

I'm sure those of you with small children spot the problem already. I'm missing nearly half of the pegs that come with it, and they are constantly underfoot. A little bag seemed like just the thing to keep the pegs together and organized.

You will need-

A child's shirt

1 yard of ribbon or string.

Standard sewing supplies

This is the shirt I used. It's a 12m, and a little too scruffy to sell back to the baby stuff store. I started by cutting out my shape-

Even out the edges, then sew the sides and bottom of the shirt together so the only opening is the neckline.

If you look carefully, you'll see that I also sewed across the corners. I wasn't happy with how this step came out, so I'm skipping it for the tute.

Turn the bag right side out, and snip a notch in the neckline.

Use a safety pin to thread your ribbon through the neckline. Tie the ends of the ribbon together to prevent little people from pulling the drawstring out. Fill it with toys and you're done!

Jumbo Animal Concentration (tutorial)

So, I have decided to set myself a posting schedule for this blog. I'm going to try to post on Mondays and Fridays. That way, I have the whole weekend to finish a project, and then the whole week to finish another. That shouldn't be too difficult.

With that out of the way, on to this week's project!

I bought this fabric from a super-reduced clearance rack at Hancocks, thinking that I could make something cute for the little man out of it. I was thinking of a little book, but then I hit on the idea of making a concentration game. I've played concentration with little kids before and they always have a hard time picking up the cards- this set will be easy to pick up and it won't matter if he crumples the cards, either.

18 squares, 9 of each. Your mileage may vary!

Jumbo fabric concentration-

You will need:

Picture fabric- I'm using animals.
Backing fabric
Heat-n-bond (optional)
Decoration fabric (optional)
Standard sewing supplies

Red sheet of DOOM!

I didn't have enough of the fabric I was originally going to use for backing, so I searched around and found this red fitted sheet. Fitted sheets make a ton of fabric- you will definitely be seeing this again. I cut out my cards and backs. If you have a rotary cutter, this would be a great place to use it. Mine is packed away somewhere, of course.

After looking at what I had so far, I realized that the card backs were going to be really visually boring unless I did something. I decided to use some orange butterfly fabric that I got at the same sale. I know that butterflies aren't usually considered very masculine, but (1) I don't want the little man to be bound by those kind of gender stereotypes and (2) that was what I had. So I fused the heat-n-bond to the back of my butterflies, cut them out carefully, and fused them to the backing fabric.

I sewed them together, leaving a gap so I could turn them right side out, and then ironed again and top stitched. I forgot to take a picture of the top stitching, but you can see it in the title picture up at the top.

Et viola! Here's the little man ignoring his new toy in favor of his drink.

Don't you know that I'm not old enough for this game, mommy?

Verdict-

These turned out pretty cute, but they took a long time to make. Actually, I haven't finished them yet, just enough to take a few pictures. They would look even nicer with some binding and a layer of batting, and would make a cool and different gift for a toddler/preschool aged kiddo. You could use appliqués to make shape, letter, or number cards. Just make two of each!