Lego tidy up pouch

As we’re off to France for three weeks for the Xmas holidays, we need to pack up a few toys for the boys. The recurrent favourite toy that we must absolutely have to bring with us is Lego. Yes, no surprises there, especially since I have not two but three fans of Lego. So the trouble is to find a way to pack them, find a place to play, and find a way for my not-so-keen-on-tidying-up-such-tiny-pieces-cause-it-takes-forever-mum-please-help-boys to pack it up quick and easily. So I thought of a solution and here is what I done:

you will need some fabric (you may want to use two different fabrics but i used only one in this project), a pair of fabric scissors, a tape measure, some thread, some ribbon or some thin rope and some interfacing.

what you need

Start by folding your fabric in 4 and decide how big the radius of your circle should be. Mine I decided would be 14″1/2. Then with a fabric marker trace from the corner outward a little dot every now and then at 14″1/2.

measuring the radiusdots from corner outward

 

 

 

 

 

Now you can join the dots together and trace a line. Cut an inch away from that line so you end up with a quarter of a circle:

join the dotscut close to the drawn line

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unflod it and you now have a circle! you need to cut a second one either from another fabric or the same…

I wanted the bottom of the pouch to be a bit more sturdy so I ironed in the middle of both circles some interfacing:

 

 

 

 

 

measure 1″3/4 away from the border and mark a dot on the fabric you will use for the inside of the pouch. then 3/4″ away from that dot mark another dot:

repeat this process an inch away from the mark you have just drawn:

Now that’s the hardest part in the project: making button holes with your machine. Usually everything should be explained very simply and clearly on you sewing machine manual. But if you have troubles with it, just let me know and i will do a tutorial on it.

now pin your fabrics right sides together:

Sew 3/4 of an inch away from the border all the way round leaving a 4″ opening:

Before turning the fabric inside out you must clip the fabric all the way round in order for the circle to look nice and smooth:

turn your fabric right side out and press:

top stitch all the way round to close the cirlce:

mark all around your fabric two dots: one at one inch and the other at 1″3/4:

you must now sew all the way round, an inch away from the border:

now sew 1″3/4 away from the border:

and you should have something looking like this:

insert your cord or ribbon inside one button hole (if you use ribbon, insert it with the help of a safety pin attached to it):

and there you have it! A lego pouch:


 

 

 

I used ribbon instead of the cord as it was too thick and would stick to the fabric… so if you want to use cord I recommend the thin silky type as it would slide better between the fabrics.

I just love how it turned out! I am now thinking of making one for each Lego theme my son has. I will find some star wars fabrics for his star wars Lego collection, some aeroplanes fabrics for his airport Lego collection… and try to keep inside each pouch the instructions to go with it.. Hope you’ll have fun making this! any questions you know where to find me!

 

 

What you can create with half square triangle blocks

In the mug rug tutorial I used some half square triangle blocks and just sew them next to each other to make simple rows. This mini tutorial is just to show you what you can do with half square triangles.

You can make some pinwheel blocks, they just look so cute for a baby quilt:

You can also make a chevron quilt which I think look fab (might be doing one soon, look out for the tutorial!):

or why not let your creative mind run wild and create whatever tickles your fancy!

send me pics of your half square triangle blocks if you want!

 

 

 

 

3D shapes

My younger son is in reception and is learning about shapes at the moment. So when we came home from school I wanted to create an activity relating to this particular topic.

Here is what we’ve done, you will need: a pack of midget gems (value ones are just perfect), cocktail sticks and that’s all!

All you need to do is put them together to make a cube, pyramid, cuboids… we had great fun making them and talked about the number of corners, faces, angles…. hope you’ll enjoy trying this at home! Here are a few pics:

Halloween decorations

I don’t know about you, but my sons were really excited about Halloween. We spent a whole week creating decorations in order to wait patiently for the trick or treating that was so desperately expected. My eldest had tons of ideas: a bunting, paper bats, pompoms spiders and a scary sewn scenery… i was quite impressed! Off we went into Brighton to buy some cheap Halloween fabrics and felts. I cut some triangles out of the fabrics and he decided they should go as a pattern. I sewed one half and he did the other… Well, he had enough after the second triangle but, hey… I’m happy he sat down to do it at all!! He’s only 6 after all. Still, he was very encouraging of me finishing it off and loved the end result!

i also bought a foam wreath and I wrapped it with the different Halloween fabrics.

We then made some paper bats and you can download the template on the BBC website. We used black paper, white and red coloring pencils. perfect!

 

So Xmas is approaching fast (faster than I thought) and I’m pretty sure they will ask me to decorate the house for it… Any ideas anyone?

recycling

When I had a clearance in my husband’s wardrobe i found myself with a huge pile of unwanted T-shirts… I gave most of them to a charity shop, I threw away the really bad looking ones and kept 4 or 5 good looking ones as I had a little project in mind. My little kiddies needed some lap blanket to sit on the sofa while watching TV.

I cut out some big squares from my hubby’s Tees and sew them together. I asked my sons what they would like on their blanket and some of their requests were expected and others a bit funny (an apple….). I looked into my kiddies cupboard and got some Tees that were too small/ dirty/ ugly… Draw the desired shapes on some bonder web and ironed it on their Tees, cut out the shapes and ironed again on the big squares. I had some towel fabrics from a project I never got round to do, so I used that for the backing. Sew them right sides together leaving a 5″ space, turned it over and stitched it closed. Et voila, a nice and quick recycled project! Send me pics of your recycled projects if you want to.