DIY crossbody tote: Sew Sweetness Kennedy Bag in vintage tea towels

Here's my rendition of the Kennedy Bag, a new pattern from Sara of Sew Sweetness. The pattern is free!


I made it up in vintage tea towels, you can see what they used to look like on my flickr. One was a calendar tea towel from the bicentennial, the other a souvenir tea towel from Massachusetts.


This bag marks my first serious foray into both online sewing contests and bag making, save random totes (one of my first three sewing projects as a little girl was a tote) and one "purse" I hand sewed about 15 years ago from fake cow print fur, nylon straps, and dice print flannel lining. I got lots of compliments on that monstrosity, but I think it was more like those kinda compliments you get when someone doesn't know what else to say.


I pinned this pattern as soon as it was released, as I prefer messenger bag style purses that I can wear cross-body, but hadn't really planned on sewing it up for quite a while. It took the announcement of the Sew Sweetness Bag Contest to really push me into trying it out! I thought it would be fun to start joining some online sew-alongs and competitions next year, so now seemed as good a time as any.


I knew from the get go that I wanted to use some of my vintage tea towels to make the bag and settled on two with a similar feel and color scheme, and also chose some quilting cotton for the accents and lining.


I really enjoyed sewing my first bag and would make this again if a family member asked for one, and possibly one more time for myself with leather accents. The changes I made include:

• Accent fabric on the bottom instead of using a tea towel
• No flap accents; the main reason being that I didn't want them covering up "Precious Moments Betsy Ross" as I've come to call her. Also, I wanted to get the bag done on time to enter the contest and have tons of other Christmas projects, so I left them out to save time. And all that hardware was getting a little cost-prohibitive and making the bag heavy. I may include them on any future renditions made up in a more plain "main fabric" as I do think they add something to the bag.
• I left the hardware off the side accents as well, for the same reasons as above. I didn't stitch the accents down so I can clip pens to them and to keep it from looking pieced together.
• I left out the interior zipper pocket; I never use those.

I learned a lot about bag making from this pattern. Mostly, interface the crap out of your bags and they turn out much nicer!

I only made one mistake when sewing up the pattern, a record for me: the part about sewing the side accents didn't really mention a seam allowance, so I went ahead and used the .5" called for in the rest of the pattern. I knew it was wrong as soon as I sewed up the first seam, but did the next three anyway. I finally gave up when I couldn't turn them, and cut new side accent pieces rather than bothering to unpick them. I used the quarter-inch SA mentioned a few steps back, that time they looked like the picture and I could actually turn them! Also, the pattern said to sew the divider line between the two interior pockets at 6" in, but the halfway point is actually 7.5", so either I was doing something wrong there, or it's a typo.

So that's it, wish me luck in my first online sewing contest, and good luck if you've entered one too!

Contest Update: Thanks for your kind comments! I didn't even make the top 15. :(

Baby viking hat, and a DIY Sheriff Rango costume

We're well into November, but I'm just getting around to doing a Halloween follow-up now! Such is life when you have a newborn.

Really, I wanted an excuse to make said newborn a viking hat after seeing a very cute, but very expensive (something like $30 for a fleece baby hat!) at a toy store in Mendocino, CA. What better excuse than Halloween? I starting Googling baby viking hat patterns when we got home from our trip, and mostly found ones for knitting. I just didn't want to commit that much time.

Then I found this awesome and adorable hat pattern from Fleece is Fun. We all know how I feel about fleece, but my inspiration hat was made from fleece, so this Halloween Hat Pack pattern is perfect. Also, fleece projects are so easy and fast, I may have been won over. We'll see.

Lemme start by saying, my first kid has a giant head. My second kid ended up with a tiny head? According to the delivery doctor anyway. And compared with his older brother, I guessed she was right. It was the first thing the doc said when he was crowning (#TMIalert): "he has a really small head!" He was born September 20th, so by Halloween he still had small head status. But when I chose the smallest size baby hat from this pack and used the suggested .5" seam allowance, my husband made me start to worry that the hat was turning out too small. I tried it on the baby and it fit, but barely. A word of advice about this pattern: a supposedly small-headed 1-and-a-half month old came close to not fitting into the smallest size!

I moved the horns higher on the head than in the pattern, but they were hard for him to balance, so I recommend leaving them as-is in the pattern. I added a silver band at the bottom to make it look a little more viking and a little less buffalo.

Other than that, I love this free little pattern and highly recommend it. There are now two other hat packs on the site and they fit all the way up to adult size. They'd make adorable Christmas gifts!

Meanwhile, with a new baby, I just didn't have the energy to sew an entire costume for my older son. He loves the Johnny Depp movie Rango, so we DIYed a Sheriff Rango costume. We had the suede cowboy vest and hat, I bought him a red and white Hawaiian shirt from the thrift store, and he already had a green dino hoodie to wear under it. The only thing I had to make was the green tail, and I decided to make the mask last minute on Halloween since I had so much of that green felt lying around in my stash anyway (you may recognize it from my last year's Kermit the Frog Fascinator I made for Halloween).

Good thing I didn't make the 2.5 year old a costume from scratch--he refused to wear it anyway since he doesn't "get" Halloween yet!

DIY pillowcases; pretty and vintage inspired

Welp, it's no secret that I love mismatched, vintage-style bedding so I decided to make myself some pretty pillowcases.

It feels a little silly to take apart actual vintage pillowcases for fabric, then turn around here and make vintage-inspired pillowcases from new fabric-- and I guess I don't really have a good explanation for it, haha. Other than, I've really been wanting a vintage sheet quilt and bought the pillowcases in my previous post just for that purpose. I did think twice before taking those other pillowcases apart, though.

Here, I saw this purple floral quilting cotton at JoAnn and fell in lurve with it. I put off buying it forever, until it ended up in the clearance section. I eventually bought the rest of the bolt, a little more than 2 yards, for less than two bucks a yard! The JoAnn branch in my city was relocating, so they had all of their fabric on sale on top of the regular deals and sales-- I pretty much got this stuff on triple-sale. I wasn't exactly sure what to do with it, but was kinda thinking pillowcases all along.

The mint was a remnant in my stash, and I purchased clearance rick rack for 97 cents. My first successful rick-rack application, I think. I just love it when other people use rick rack and I'm often inspired to try it whenever I see a cute project that includes it, but somehow every time I touch the stuff it turns into this corny Becky-Home-Eccy looking project. I think one reason it works here is because it's so subtle. The trim barely peeks out from the cuff, adding some vintage detail.

These are super easy if you're inspired to make your own! I know, you're thinking, well duh, how hard is a pillowcase going to be? I think a pillowcase is one of the first things I ever sewed, after all. They're made using a method that creates no exposed seams. You can find a tutorial by doing an Internet search for the burrito method, sausage pillowcases, or turn-tube or tube pillowcases. Various names for a method that accomplishes the same thing. Mine came together in well under an hour, not including pressing and cutting. I know there are more in my future!

DIY Utensil Bouquet

I plan to do a round up post in the future with all of my favorite somewhat-homemade and DIY gift ideas, so I thought I'd post one of my favorites so far.

A utensil bouquet makes a great housewarming, bridal or baby shower gift, or maybe even wedding gift if you go really over the top with it. As you can see,  it's basically a gift basket made to look like a bouquet, or in my case, a pot of flowers. It can take an inexpensive or ho-hum gift like utenstils and make it more memorable or visually appealing.

I simply purchased a flower pot, some utensils from her registry, and some dish towels to match her kitchen's color scheme. I used floral tape, shish-ka-bob skewers, and turned the dish towels into flowers. Then I just arranged everything in the flower pot to look like a bouquet. Some paper crinkle grass/gift basket filler (what is that stuff called?) holds everything up nicely. And I almost forgot; I lined it with some coordinating tissue paper first, standing it up a little around the sides. Ribbon finishes it off.

For a baby shower, you can use baby washcloths and onesies to make the flowers, and things like bottle scrubbers could also make up the bouquet... while kitchen timers and measuring cups tied to the side would look adorbs for the new bride or as a house warming gift.

What about you, do you prefer to DIY your gifts?

Sewing project: bandanna pillows

These pillows have a zipper opening at the bottom, unlike my previous bandanna pillow (pictured below), which had a split opening on the back. I think next time I'll return to the split opening. I also just stitched around the edged as opposed to the bias tape edge on the previous one. One thing I did again was interface the bandannas first; they're just too flimsy not to!

The smaller brown one is not a bandanna, in case you haven't guessed. I quilted it to tie the color scheme in the other two pillows together.

Fabric dyeing: revamping ruined bedding

Recently, the Lifetime Moms Facebook page, or some other similar FB page, had a status update about how it would be nice if "your husband does the laundry once in a while."

Aside from being annoyingly sexist by assuming all families have traditional gender roles (or even that all moms have husbands), it just wasn't true... I HATE it when my husband does the laundry. Mostly because, in my opinion, he does it all wrong. But all other housework, besides laundry and cooking, is actually my husband's domain as he's such a neat freak. Unfortunately that means if I let the laundry sit around for a little too long, my husband's clean freak nerve starts twitching and he gets to washing. Which brings us to today's post.

I love discounted high end bedding, especially the percale weave Ralph Lauren bedding you can often find at TJ Maxx. But I also professed my love for mismatched and shabby chic bedding. Rachel Ashwell's Simply Shabby Chic line at Target is kind of a perfect blend of the two, except several years ago it was still pricier than the Ralph Lauren bedding at Ross. I think the Target bedding is still a great value, as long as I wait for it to go on clearance or at least on sale.

So it was a big splurge when I bought this amazing coverlet at Target back in, oh, 2005 or so.

Ugh, I love it just as much even today. Target doesn't even carry it anymore, I had to find this picture on eBay. I believe the print is called "ditsy daisy."

Anyway, the splurge was huge because I also bought some pink floral bedding to go with it, which Target amazingly still carries (but not online, so I can't link it). I think I spent something like $80 or $90 for the whole she-bang, which was a big deal because I was in college at the time. My husband and I weren't even married yet.

We used it on our bed with the coordinating sheets just once, when my overzealous clean freak then-boyfriend somehow managed to do this to the coverlet...

The entire thing was bleached out! I still don't know how he managed to do that (I was too broken-hearted to ask at the time), and when I asked him recently how exactly it happened, he had no idea what I was talking about. It had been three moves since he'd seen this blanket, and, after all, it had only looked like it's previous incarnation above for a very short time.

The bleached out version really doesn't look so bad in these pictures; it's almost even kind of appealing. I blame my camera. In real life, it was not. cute.

I'd already planned on dying most of our bedding to coordinate with each other, and knew if I dyed this coverlet a light enough color, the bleached out flowers might still show through.

I usually tend toward pinks, blues, and purples for our room, but I decided to go with yellow after pinning these images:

I love these two images (I think it's the same bedroom snapped with a different camera), and thought the yellow would couple nicely with the orangish hue the flowers on our blanket had become. (I could not find a source for the pictures outside of random Tumblrs and re-blogged pages; if you know who took this pictures please tell me as I prefer giving proper credit where credit is due.)

I went with Rit Dye this time, because I already had some Sunshine Orange on hand, and opted to dye in the washing machine since I was working with such a large piece. I bought a bottle of Lemon Yellow and added the entire thing to the dye bath, and poured in a small amount of the orange. At first, I thought the orange might've been a mistake, but I actually quite like how it turned out.


Granted, it doesn't look so saturated in this collage, but again, I'm blaming the camera. It's a very sweet yellow closer to nacho cheese than to butter in real life, but I like it.

There's a length of blue scallop stitching around the end that not only didn't bleach out, it didn't turn yellow. So, obviously the thread is synthetic. It doesn't really "go", but it's not that noticeable.


The pillowcases in the back are the original pink Rachel Ashwell ones I purchased to go with this coverlet. The front ones are authentic vintage feedsack pillowcases I nabbed from my mom's house-- I usually ask before claiming goods that aren't mine from my parent's house, but these weren't being used and I didn't want them to get ruined, plus I just love them! I think they came with the house when my parents bought it in the 90s. They live in a 1906 farmhouse on an actual ranch, so perhaps these really did hold feed at one time!

Sewing project: fat quarter grocery bags

These bags were made from fat quarters that were in my Granmma's stash. She had cut a bunch herself that I believe she might have intended on selling online-- she was always extremely entrepreneurial. I would've loved to've turned these into a cool farm themed quilt, but they were the most appropriate fabric in my stash for a gift for my mom, considering she lives on a ranch.

I found tons of great fat quarter grocery bag tutorials online, of course. I'd love to try this one and this one. But they were all for patterns that went the opposite direction, so I ended up winging it and came up with a lined wider grocery bag.

They're fully lined, which basically made them turn out reversible. That was a bonus. That's why it looks like there are four in these pics-- there's only two. I intended for the striped hen print to be the outside of one and the cows to be the outside of the other, but mom can use them however she wants.

I gave them those square bottom corners, what are they called? This gal refers to them as "milk carton corners," haha.


My biggest disappointment was the handles, I wanted them extra sturdy but they came out kinda stretchy. That's because I mis-measured when I cut and made them too narrow to make a conventional strap, where you press the edges to the center then fold in half. I ended up sewing them into tubes, which didn't give them the heft I was hoping for. Next time, I'd just buy some nylon webbing, but the point of this exercise was to stash bust.

Sewing project: appliqued monogram towels

I am so behind on posts! I made these last month the day before Christmas Eve. Talk about a last-minute DIY gift idea!

My brother is getting married this year, so I kind of wanted to do something "coupley" for his and his fiance's gift. It was no surprise that when I searched "Christmas gift ideas for bride to be" and variations thereof, monogrammed anything was a popular suggestion.

I don't have an embroidery machine, so a typical monogram wasn't going to cut it. But I had plenty of "Steam A Seam" leftover from the Christmas stockings, so I decided to give appliqueing a shot for the second time ever.

To make this project, I just picked a basic font, sans serif to make the appliqueing easier. I typed out the letters I needed in Word and printed them out to use as stencils  From there, it was just a basic appliqueing process, adhering the Steam A Seam to the back of the fabric, cutting out the letters, ironing them to the towels, then stitching them in place with a very tight zig-zag stitch.

These pictures are so horrible! I came up with this project the day before Christmas Eve, bought the towels, then did it all in one afternoon, then quickly snapped pics before wrapping them. The pictures were taken at night near my sewing nook, so the only lighting is the yellow-ish CFL bulbs from our ceiling fan. I promise the colors look better in person.

All in all, I think applique monogram towels are one of those perfect DIY gifts that fuses store-bought with a  homemade touch. They're quick, but still have that personal touch that you get with an entirely homemade gift. Also-- they're practical. I'm sold!