Cooling pad covers

After a couple of days of draping these cooling pads around our necks to beat the heat, I realized that I'm going to need to wash these at some point. Putting the flax seed-filled heating/cooling pads in the washing machine didn't seem like a good idea. We needed covers.

Heating pad from shirt collar

Here's another super simple project: making a heating pad/neck warmer from a recycled shirt collar.

All you need is the collar from a shirt... (here's what Aysha did with other parts of this shirt)

...and some flax seed.

Putting more pockets in the shopping bag

It turns out that one little pocket just isn't enough for my keys, wallet and cell phone.  So today added a couple more.  I found another shirt pocket from the stash of scraps that Aysha gave me that was just perfect.

Putting a pocket in a shopping bag

The other day, I needed to run to the store to get something, and, as usual, I didn't have any pockets (why don't they put more pockets in women's clothes?). If it was winter, I would've put on my coat and used its pockets but now that it's nice and warm (finally :D), I wasn't going to do that. So, rather than bring my shoulder bag (along with all the random stuff that's always in there), just to hold my wallet and keys, I decided to throw them into the shopping bag.  It just made me think, this thing really needs a pocket.

Well, yesterday, I was going through the stash of scraps that Aysha gave me last year, and guess what I found? A pocket! She had unpicked it off a shirt. If I'm not mistaken, it was this shirt.

So, I turned my shopping bag inside out, pinned the pocket on, ...

...stitched it and I was good to go!

My New Yoga Bag!

Here's yet another recycled shirt project from an old Girl Guide uniform. I've got a whole series of these now. With my other uniform I made a series of pouches and bags and a reversible camera bag which was lined with the fabric from Girl Guide pants.

I had bought this other uniform a couple of years ago when it was on clearance at the Girl Guide store (the Girl Guide uniform had changed making this old uniform style obsolete). The sleeves and cuffs had been made into two shoe bags and a pouch at the recycle a shirt class and I was left with the middle bit of the shirt (or basically a shirt with very short sleeves).

I finally got to use what was left of the shirt for this yoga bag (thanks to Sahar for the suggestion). I used blue fabric from the old uniform pants to add contrast (thanks to Aunty for that suggestion). I cut out circles from the pants pockets to make the bottom of the bag and used the waist band for the strap . And then with Aysha's help, here's what we came up with:

Reversible Camera Bag

I made this camera bag last week using more of my recycled shirt.

I had an idea for a pattern for a reversible laptop sleeve/bag and I wanted to test it out with something small first, so I wouldn't put too much fabric at risk. So, this is what I ended up with.

Blue side out:


Striped side out:

My recycled shirt

Here's what I made at the recycle a shirt class and the tote bag class, plus what I did with the rest of the shirt:

From the sleeves and cuffs I made two shoe bags and a pouch. The pouch is made from the two cuffs sewn together. These are super easy projects.

From the body of the shirt, I made a lined, reversible bag. The blue fabric is from a recycled shawl. The pocket is one of the front pockets of the shirt. This one is a little more complicated. Making the straps took much longer than I anticipated. But it looks pretty cool, huh?