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I love drawstring bags. They are so useful! I use them to store little projects and my toiletries when we're camping. I think they're such a better container than plastic bags or bins. So it's no coincidence that all of my handmade gifts for Christmas were housed in drawstring bags. The last time I made one I took some photos and wrote up a little tutorial for you all. You can find the tutorial right here.Enjoy! Oh, and tomorrow you'll see what's in the bag pictured above. :)
Last week I was looking at my box of colored pencils and remembered a project in this book. I'm amazed I haven't made it sooner because I have a deep attraction to anything rainbow. It was an easy project and I think it turned out ok even though I don't have a walking foot for my sewing machine (which they recommend). The most time was spent cutting all of the colors, so I went ahead and cut enough for two! Sometimes I'm quite clever. ;) The leftover strips I used to make some bookmarks, I'll post them tomorrow.
This may be strange, but I love containers. Especially old containers. Boxes, jars, baskets, bowls… oh they make me so happy. And for holding sewing or craft supplies, they look great while working well at the same time. Here are some photos from my craft room.
An old 7Up crate holds some fabric. I found this in the garage, hosed it off, and filled it up.
A peanut butter Jar and a pickle jar hold buttons. And no, it’s not logical to organize buttons in rainbow order all in one jar. But I couldn’t help myself, and I'm the type of person that puts things in rainbow order. It may be a disease. I got them both at the flea market for about 50 cents each.
More buttons, this time in sweet little jelly jars (also from the flea market). The flowers are in a honey jar (I found that on Ebay).
Bias tape and rick rack in a little suitcase (Flea market).
Fabric scraps are stored in an old hatbox (also from the flea market).Often old things have an old smell, so to get rid of it, I wash the item with a damp rag to get rid of dust and grime, then I let it air out for a few days. If it still stinks, I get another damp rag, put a few drops of essential oil on it, and wipe it down again. The suitcase stunk really bad, and I wiped it with essential oil months ago and it still smells nice whenever I open it. Sometimes I open it just to smell inside. lol If you didn’t want to get more delicate items wet (like the hat box, which is cardboard), you can also put a little sachet filled with herbs, flowers, and maybe a drop or two of essential oil inside the box and it will smell great too.
Brian bought me a couple sets of knitting needles for Christmas and until now I had no way to keep them all tidy and organized and it was driving me a little bit crazy. Enter the knitting needle rolls. To make them, I loosely followed the directions for the colored pencil roll in Last-Minute Patchwork & Quilted Gifts, modifying the sizes to fit the needles.
This is the one for the single-pointed needles. I made it out of a beautiful vintage table cloth. There is no way I'd be able to cut into something like this normally but when I got it it already had a big strip cut off. :( It still took me months to muster up enough courage to pick up the scissors.
I included a little flap at the top so the needles won't slip out. As I'm looking at these pictures I realize that I could have just made the entire roll taller and then just fold that over. I made it separately. heh. duh!
And here's the one for the dp needles. I made the pockets different sizes to fit the different sized needles. Some ended up a bit too big and others are a little snug but overall I'm happy with it.
