Small Projects

I've finished a few small projects lately so thought it was time for a quick update on some of those!

Two weekends ago I made a new pouf, or gumdrop pillow as I think the official name goes.  This is the third or fourth one of these I've made, and they're all from an Amy Butler pattern.  Here are some of the old ones:

It's a nice easy pattern to make either 18 or 24" footstools, but I think it might be out of print. Anyway, I decided to make a  new one for the living room.  I currently have one in my studio, and the dogs love to sit on it.  I thought it would be nice to have in the house as a footstool (which I didn't have), for the dogs to sit on, and to help Bullett jump up on the sofa (his little back legs are getting a bit gimpy).  I picked out some fabric from my stash (Thanks Georgia!) and stitched it up.  I made the 24" size, but realized later, that it's about the same height as my living room furniture, so it wasn't much help for Bullett! I think the old one has just gotten compressed, and eventually I'm sure the new one will too.  It's stuffed with eleven walmart sacks of old scraps (cut off batting edges, selvedges, scraps that are too small to sew with, old clothes too holey to take to goodwill) and two old cut up king sized mattress pads.  It's always surprising to me how much material you need to really fill one up. The fabric filling makes it quite heavy, but also less compressible and sturdier feeling than if I'd used fiber fill.  I've already been enjoying having it to put my feet up while watching the Olympics!

The next small project is this bag I made up this past weekend to hold my on-the-go crochet project.  I have plenty of medium and large tote bags, and plenty of small pouches, but I needed something medium size (~13" square) that would close up but not with a zipper (which sometimes catches yarn) and was very lightweight.  It's for my current carrying around crochet project which is just shoved inside my purse so I didn't want anything too big or with too much structure.  It was really fun to pull out a bunch of fun bright scraps and piece them into a cute drawstring bag.  Now my yarn won't get caught in my keys and all the other purse junk!

And finally this last weekend my friend Liz hosted an Arabian Nights themed Valentine's day party.  I didn't have time to do anything too elaborate, but I grabbed some fabric from my stash (thanks Georgia!) and whipped up these harem pants and a headscarf veil thing.  They matched a shirt I already had and voila! quick costume.  The harem pants were super quick, I followed this great tutorial on youtube, check it out if you need a quick costume.  The veil is just a rectangular piece of fabric with some gold trim stitched down, but it did give me a chance to use the rolled hem foot for the first time ever.  Wow have I ever been missing out.  It worked great!  so much easier than trying to press a tiny hem, especially in ravelly synthetic fabric.  I only snapped one quick selfie before rushing off to the party, but you get the idea. 

One of the nicest things about all of these projects is that they were 100% from my stash.  I love using stuff I already have!