Sewing project ideas

How about hot pot pads? You make the "pillow" fill it with rice and toss in a few cloves and some cinnamon to give off a homey odor. They sell well at craft shows! Another thing would be tote bags. The ecological kind like the stores are selling, but the ones at the stores are kind of ugly! You could do pretty ones to sell at craft sales.

For the most part I do things like Quilts..baby quilts alot, table runners and placematts, throw pillows, clothes for teddy bears for my baby sister, dog toys out of old jeans. I've also started making a jean blanket for on the beach from old jeans (i need 2 more pairs i wont feel bad about cutting up to finish it though! must wait til i wear a pair out or go to a thrift store for a cheap pair that looks good and doesnt fit) I used to do pot holds and oven mitts. Winter hats and mittens. I found barbie clothes to be just too small for my interests! I'm not into making alot of clothing or things i have to follow a complcated pattern for.

How about eye mask? They are easy to make. Sachet's are easy to make to just sew up a couple of squares and add lavender or any potpourri you like.

well what you might want to do is hit the library and take a look at the craft books there, but my idea is to make hot water bottles or covers for your heating pads...

I just had another thought, and that is make fabric boxes. One of the pattern companies has the pattern in their pattern books. I think it might have been McCalls. Anyway it doesn't take too much fabric and they are so much fun to make and sell.

Could you make fabric bracelets? Try to make different kinds of purses. Or how about small stuffed animals? When I was little, my grandmother helped me make a two dimensional stuffed animal. We sewed together three or four inch squares, kind of like you would for a quilt. And made two larger pieces. We took a "pattern" a cutout picture of cat I brought home from zoo school. She used that to trace a front and back (flipped it over) and cut it out. Then we sewed almost around the whole pattern, turned it right side out and stuffed it with batting. Then sewed up the rest by hand. It was my favorite stuffed animal for a very long time. I still have it in the garage somewhere. You could free hand any shape/animal. We sewed some buttons on the cat for eyes. But I don't really sew much and it's a pretty simple way to make a stuffed animal. Have fun!

I was going to say potholders, too. How about hotpads (for setting hot dishes on)made the same way? Or cloth napkins?

Table runners are great. You can make them match holidays or seasons or just every day.

Sew your fabric pieces together to make a shopping bag. It works best if it is a strom material like denim or something. Just a big square box made of fabric with a handle. It is a pattern that you can make one up of fairly easy and you can make it cute. I like to have bags in my car so that when I find I need to carry a lot of things I can just grab a bag and ease my loads.

How about coasters...they are very easy to make...just cut your squares and add a piece of batting inbetween and finish off.....you can get creative....do a little embellising on them too...they are fun and great gifts!

How about some pot holders? All you need is fabric for the front and back, an bath towel that you don't need anymore, and thread! You use that towel as the insulation, so you need to cut two pieces of the towel the same size as the fabric. Quilt it (sew straight lines through all the layers), then trim it up and make a binding (a strip of fabric folded in half and then sewn down on the front and back. :O)

How about throw pillows? They are nice and easy and you can decorate them in all sorts of interesting ways or just stick with funky fabrics. Or maybe try some cloth shopping bags? If you have some curtain fabric that would be perfect. Great for the environment as you won't need plastic carriers, and trendy too! Baby bibs are easy to create if you have any babies in the family who'd appreciate a gift. Have fun! Look around your house for more inspiration.

Some other ideas are mini tissue holders, pillows, or pillow cases, mini zippered pouches, checkbook covers, card holders and little stuffies! You can find a lot of great free tutorials and patterns online.