Pimp my ... Cart ??

   
Well I’m feeling a little crafty again, and with the Wing Ding (community garage sale) coming up I thought it was time to spruce up my shopping cart.  The big problem I’ve always had with these carts is that the holes are so big you lose you bag through them, and well lets face it how snazzy is a cardboard box in the bottom (if you can find  one to fit).  So here is the game plan … I ‘m going to use some old jeans to make a liner.

So first things first … take measurements.  My cart is about 20 inches tall, 12 inches deep, and 16 inches wide.  I drew a little diagram with my measurements on it so I would remember what number went where.

figure out how much fabric we are going to need (how many pant legs).  I used one smaller pant leg for the bottom, and dug up some lager pant legs for the sides.  I gave my self a 1/2 inch for my seam allowance (center picture).  And the picture on the end is Eddie trying to “help”, look at that face  :) .

 

 

I decided to use some bias tape to finish the raw edges and for a little pop of colour, and some twill tape to use as ties to hold it up in the cart.  I did the bias tape on the sides first and then did the top and bottom to keep it neat.  And here is Eddie “helping” again. 

 

Here’s the test run to make sure it fit and that the ties were in the right places, so far I’m happy with how it’s looking.

I made a top flap to hide every thing inside the cart, and decided  not to add any pockets for now, although I may change my mind but for now I’m going to leave it the way it is. I added a tie to the center of the flap so I can tie it down if I want/need too.

Here’s the picture before the flap was attached and all the bias tape done.

and  After, the finished bag, ain’t she purdy.

The Faux Feather Pillow

Well  I wanted to make some throw pillows but I have no “fluff” to stuff them with, so the creative wheels turn. I have a bag of snippets that was getting quite full, it’s been hanging next to my sewing machine for about a month now.  Usually I would throw it out when the bag was full, but this time I thought I would use it to stuff my pillows.  Will surfing the net I came across a tutorial for how to make stuffing from Belrossa’s Blog. Now having reed through the post to find she ran her bit through the blender.  /Now I was forbid running any thing that is not food through my blender, I just cut my bits into really small little bits (some thing the little people could do to, they like to help when it involves taking things apart.)  




So here is a picture of my tub o’bits.  Now to contain my bits and pieces I used an old t-shirt as the pillow form.  All I did was cut a square (mine was about 14in. sq.) and sew three sides together.  After the case was about 2/3 full I sewed up the last side to keep all the '”fluff” in.

Now for the pillow cover, I used some bits and pieces from some button up shirts that where kicking around.  I used two short sleeves from one shirt as the back, I overlapped the finished edges so I would have a place to slide the pillow into the cover.  Then I pieced together some other pieces to make the front.

 


The next thing I did was to put my Backing piece over the front pieces with right sides together, and stitched all the way around. I then trimmed all the excess of the edges and prettied it up and turned it right side out.  Now your ready to slide you pillow form into its cover and voila a Faux feather pillow.  I find that the squish of the snippet fluff mimics a feather pillow with out the pointy hard feather bits poking you in the head.

DIY Ironing Table

So I’ve been seeing these little ironing tables made from the cheep wood TV trays and was thinking that I would really like to make one to put beside my sewing machine and the more i thought about it the more the gears started to turn … staring at this old stand that was still in good shape. I figured if they can cover a TV tray I could cover my stand.  There is a nice tutorial for the TV tray ironing table here.  The really nice thing about covering the top of this stand is that it’s on castors so I can roll it around the room with out disturbing what’s on it.

I started with the cheepy microwave stand you’d find at Wal-Mart, or any other department store.  I had a plain white one kicking around from my apartment days  sigh …. Very dusty but I wiped it down before I put the top on.

I started with an old towel for a little squish to my board, I put a staple in the center of one end with my handy dandy staple gun, pull it taught non the opposite end and droop in another staple. I only put a few in each side for now.






I then put on two layers of Cotton batting.  I would have used the heat resistant kind if I had any kicking around, but the plain stuff will do.  Again I dropped a few staples in each side keeping the material taught.




Next is the pretty fabric for the top, I used a medium weight cotton for mine.  So again keeping the fabric taught staple along the sides, leave enough room to fold the corners in.  When you get to the corner you can cut away the extra batting from  the corner and neatly fold the fabric around the corner.  See horrible pic below.

 
Here is a shot of my messy staple job but no one will see it hidden underneath, if I wanted to get fancy I could cover it with some felt but like I said, no one should see it.