Recycled Sweater Bag

I found a great site, sew4home.com, with great sewing tutorials. They had a diaper bag tutorial that I wanted to try for the first time. I've never made a bag or a purse before - but this was so easy! I took an old extra large beaded and embroidered sweater that I was going to throw away, and cut it up to make this bag. I used every bit of that sweater for this bag. The lining material was also left over from another project, so I only had to buy the interfacing.

At times with all the layers of interfacing, thick sweater, lining, pockets ... my presserfoot was all the way to the top! Thank goodness for my old extra heavy duty Janome machine. If you use regular cloth it shouldn't be so bad. You cant really see the beads on these pictures, but the cloth had white seed pearl type beads scattered over it. Definitely made sewing interesting!

Butterfly Skirt from Thrift Store Mumu

I made this cute butterfly skirt from a giant sized sundress I found at the thrift store. The cloth was cute and in good shape, there was plenty of fabric due to the large size, and it only cost a few dollars.

Making the skirt only calls for making two cuts, sewing one side seam, making a casing and inserting one piece of elastic.

I cut off the bodice of the sun dress below the arm holes, leaving a good length of cloth for the skirt, since my daughter wanted it long. At this point you have a skirt basically already -  complete with side seams already sewn and the bottom already hemmed. If I made a casing and inserted elastic in the waist right now, the skirt would be much too thick and bunchy at the waist for my tiny-waisted daughter. The skirt needs to be trimmed down a bit for a better fit.

I took her hip measurement and added two inches - this will be the width of the skirt at the waist (the waist measurement).  Starting at one side seam with your skirt inside out and folded at the side seams, measure out half your waist measurement at the waist of your cloth. (Half because the cloth already has two side seams sewn and is folded.)  Mark the waist seam measurement on the cloth.