Simple Skirt Upcycle Project

I love to upcycle old fabric items such as sheets and doona (duvet) covers. Today I whipped up a quick skirt: 

The black on white print of Australian animals caught my eye and I couldn't resist it for a few dollars in a charity shop. It was originally a single doona cover.
The skirt only took about an hour to make. It has an elastic waistband for comfort and only one French Seam in the back.

I also added a faux drawstring just so I easily know where the front centre is when I'm dressing. 

To make it more practical for everyday wear I added a cell phone pocket to the front right but I print matched it so it's camouflaged. 

This only used about half of the animal  print fabric and the other side of the doona cover was white, so there's plenty of leftover fabric for other projects. 

And then to de-stash a few leftover HSTs from a project 4 or 5 years ago I whipped up a quick dribble catcher to pop under our dogs water dish. 

So I was only in the studio for a couple of hours but it felt quite productive. 

Productivity

Productivity doesn't always mean working on a cute project. Yesterday I spent some time winding bobbins with scrappy thread reel leftovers:

But look at that 15 bobbins ready to use! Just from the reel ends of three reels.

This habit means when I get little snippets of time to be in my sewing studio the next few months I don't need to waste time winding bobbins before I sew. 

Scrappy Dog Bed

I basted and quilted a scrappy rectangle today to make a patchwork dog bed:

It features 330 scrappy 2.5" squares & I used a scrap of batting. 

For projects like this I favour simple quick meandering lines quilting:

Quilting as seen from back of dog bed top

I added a simple backing with a zipper slot so I could insert a couple of cheap store bought pillows. 

Front

Back

This is huge it has two pillows and a smaller cushion inside to fill it and should be really comfy for our 15 year old Spoodle Henry.

Scrappy Patchwork Pouffe

Scrap demolishing projects are a favourite of mine and these scrappy pouffes are so cute! 

We needed another for our home library, so I decided to use 2.5" scrappy squares to whip one up. 

The top features eight rows of eight 2.5" scrappy squares. The sides have five rows of eight 2.5" squares:

On the bottom I used a fat quarter and created a zip opening:

It's for our home library. I have an older one in there that I made about five years ago, it has a lower profile so I can slide it under the chair when I want to (see example on the right) but I'm loving the new traditional pouffe shape too! 

Pattern Testing

Eye Spy Adventures BOM is progressing well, this month we made a shoe!

I am really enjoying hosting this BOM through 2024/25, the variety of blocks is interesting and quirky!