HOW TO: Make a child's t-shirt into a peg bag

There are a very few things more satisfying than hanging all your laundry out on the line on a warm summer's day...Your clothes smell fresh, and you save the environment (just a bit!) by not running five loads through the tumble dryer!

Uh, however, if you're like me, you need about a million clothes pegs, hence the "peg bag". You're welcome to buy one from Cath Kidston for a tenner, if you so desire, but an easier and more fun thing to do is to convert an old child's tee (one of your children's own, or a neighbour's!)...It costs next to nothing and can be sorted in about an hour.What you'll need:

1. A child's t-shirt. Any size from about 2 to 4 will be right.
2. A small hanger. This may have come with the t-shirt, or something else...I find that the ones that come with adult swimsuit tops are quite good!
   
3. Some stuff you have lying around the house.

I have to be intentionally vague on the third one, because there are a number of different ways to accomplish the same thing!

There are two parts to creating a peg bag from a t-shirt:

1. You have to close up the bottom of the tee.
2. You have to create a hole to put the pegs in.

That's really it...And how you get there is up to you.

The first time I made one, all I did was to run the bottom of the shirt through the sewing machine and make a slice across the chest.

The peg bag you see in the picture is crocheted shut with a very small-gauge hook and some crochet thread, and detailed with a picot stitch! I did the same on the hole for the pegs, partially to match the bottom, and partially to prevent the opening from fraying.

The final part is to hang the t-shirt up on the hanger, et voila! You've got a nifty, cheap peg bag, and you also find a use for those old t-shirts you love, can't throw away, but just can't justify keeping around :)

noisypitta.etsy.com

Sorry, I've been cheating :)

I have something to tell you all.

I've been seeing someone else.

His name is "crafting". No, not just crochet, but OTHER stuff too.

I'm so ashamed.

...

But look at the cool stuff I made!!!

The first one is a teddy bear that I made for my son, to help him scare away the mean monsters under his bed. Well, actually, in the time I've taken to make it, we've managed to convince him that there are nice monsters too. The nice monsters come and have a party with him after we've put him to bed, and the bonus is that the nice monsters scare away all the mean monsters. So he doesn't really need a teddy anymore, but he still loves it! Here he is:


I started out hand-stitching everything, but eventually gave up and turned to my old Singer 99k for help. It took a while to get it right because the tension discs were messed up for some reason...Anyway, turns out that the manual that came with the thing (keep in mind it's like 50 years old) is AMAZING! It gives really good step-by-step instructions on how to take apart absolutely everything, so I was able to fix it myself. Eventually I got it working with this fabric, which is really just an old Gap jumper that shrunk in the wash.

Probably the hardest bit of this project was doing the blanket stitch around the edge; it took nearly all of an 8m pack of embroidery floss, which I had to pull through every stitch. If anyone knows a better way of doing this, I would appreciate the advice!

Long story short (too late!), Jim loves his teddy :)

And here's an older shot of my sewing machine. It's an oldie, but goodie! In this shot, I was sewing a purple crinoline into a dress.

Happy crafting!

noisypitta.etsy.com

Works in progress, or, why I've not made anything FUN lately

I've figured out WITHOUT A DOUBT why I don't make garments: they take too frickin' long!!! The problem is, I realise this, then spend ages not making garments, forget why I don't make garments, and then give it a go again. Stupid garments! This is what I'm currently doing, and why I haven't made any progress making all the cute little dudes I doodle in my notebook:
I have been working on this project for the better part of, oh, four weeks? Okay, granted, I made a custom order of two aliens in the meantime, but COME ON! I have the attention span of a flea, so this is torturing me. But I bought 10 balls of yarn for this project and I will not have them just sitting around! I've finally made the decision to put some welly into it and actually work on finishing it so I can get on with other things that I've been brainstorming, such as:

• A little screaming devil dude, complete with pointy tail and horns. Red, of course.
• A stripey French monster with a beret, using my two-colour stripes with no joins technique.
• A lop-eared bunny out of lilac-coloured organic wool, which I started at the crochet booth in Crystal Palace with Katie from Good Hooking (I'll have to post about this shortly).

Ah, well, excuses, excuses, right?!

noisypitta.etsy.com