Easy DIY Coin Purse/Makeup Bag

I’m all about inspiring others to DIY and let their creativity take hold in an environmentally sustainable way! Re-using or repurposing things gives me so much joy and I hope to spark some joy in you by doing so! I recently whipped up a few little bags with zips, which could be used for make-up, accessories, toiletries, coins or (I’m hoping to start a trend here) snacks! I used recycled zips and fabrics which I have either found at second hand stores, been given, or unpicked from pre-loved items of clothing. Here’s a quick and easy step by step as to how to make you own little zip up bag!

1. Start with the zip. The size of the zip will determine the size of your bag. Measure the length of your zip, this will be the width of your bag.
2. Get your fabric. Choose a heavier weighted fabric for the outside and a thinner cotton fabric for the lining. Cut your fabrics to the size you want, ensuring the width is no more than 2cm wider than the zip ( to allow for the side seams).
3. Stich up the seams of your fabric to create two pouches. Stitch the lining seams slightly smaller than the outer pouch.
4. Pin your zip (reverse side) to the top of the outer fabric pouch opening.
5. Stitch the zip in place.
6. Turn the outer layer right side out.
7. Put the inner layer inside the outer layer of the bag.
8. Hand stitch the inner layer to the inside of the zip, hiding the seams.

Now I know this is a simple step by step and not designed to be a full blown tutorial. It’s to give you a general idea of how to do it. There are plenty of overly complicated tutorials online if you need them, but don’t be afraid to give it a go, wing it and make some mistakes. It’s how we learn!

Happy sewing!

~ Fancy Nanna ~

 

Refashioning Old T-Shirts

My husband went through his wardrobe at the start of summer last year and gave me a stack of unwanted men’s t-shirts. I was in two minds as to what to do with them. Do I donate them to charit…

Source: Refashioning Old T-Shirts

Laundry Basket Make-over

Hello all!

I hope you are all enjoying the holiday season so far! Here is something to inspire you to get crafty.

I have always disliked this laundry basket, which my colour blind hubby bought many years ago.

It was a dark brown cane with a cotton lining. One of our cats happily chewed on the basket lid… so it looked very rustic to say the least!

So, I decided to make it over! It was so super easy. I picked up a can of white spray paint and gave it a good coat.

While it was drying I covered the Velcro brown straps (that were holding the lid on and working as the hinge) with some lovely floral fabric. I just glued the fabric straight over them and trimmed the edges!

I then put the basket back together and WALAH! So pretty!

I could’ve attempted to fix the chewed up lid but that’s a job for another day! I also would’ve preferred to use a creamy white instead of the stark white I chose, but I am still happy with the result! Better than poo brown!

I hope you all have a lovely festive season and spend some time getting crafty and repurposing some things you may have around the house!

~Fancy Nanna~

Exercise In Style!

Recently my mother in law gave me a pair of pre-loved gym pants. They were a good fit and fine as they were, but I saw a great opportunity to refashion them into the pair that I’ve been wanting for ages! A tight full length pair of gym pants is what i was after! These however were bootleg – an easy fix!

I chopped off the already hemmed bottom seams.

I then turned the pants inside out. I laid them flat and placed another pair of gym pants on top to gage how far I needed to take in the seams. I pinned where I needed to sew, guessing how far to take them in as I got to the calf/ankle part of the leg.

pinning away!

I stitched where I had pinned, then tried them on again to see if any adjustments were required. After taking the leg in at the ankle, I trimmed the excess fabric from the seam. There was no need to hem the inner seam as the lycra/polyester fabric wouldn’t fray.

I used the completed leg as a template for the other side.

All that was left to do was hem the ankle seam with a zig-zag stitch and wallah, all done!

I am super happy with my new pants, and I just saved myself at least $30, which is what I would’ve spent on a brand new pair!

Who Needs Pants?!

Hey folks!

Its been a while since I’ve posted, and I do apologise, but I’ve been SUPER busy and our internet has been playing up. I know, excuses, excuses, but never fear! I have an exciting project to share with you!

So, I bought these pants 2 years ago for $10 bucks! Bargain, I know…. however, in the last two years since I’ve had them, I have worn them all of 4 times.

Pants…such lonely pants

Don’t get me wrong, I liked the pants. They have this cool fabric and look like jeans but they’re not denim… oooh tricky! But they just didn’t feel right when wearing them, perhaps it was due to the stiff ‘not denim’ fabric?

Anyhow – I decided to turn the pants into a skirt! A skirt that I could specifically wear to work on CASUAL FRIDAY! (all my other skirts are too short…not acceptable for the office!)

I started by unpicked the inner leg seams. This was quite relaxing and didn’t take that long at all!

Breezy….

I pinned the front and back seams and then I made a big chop!

Simba approves

I the stitched the front and back seams and then hemmed the bottom edge.

All done! I’m posing…

And the back..

The back 🙂

I wore my new skirt out for the day with my amazing mother and father in law! We checked out the Guildford Book Exchange, it was awesome! I bought some sweet old school Archie /Betty and Veronica comics!

Love these!

Overall, it was a successful project and a fab day!

Thanks for reading!

~

 

The Patchwork Quilt Project

I remember when I was 16, my mum took me to Spotlight and we picked out a bunch of fabrics with the intention of making a patchwork quilt. 10 years later, I finally got around to doing it! I thought I’d write about how I made it to inspire you to make your own!

I did a bit of research (looked online, read a few books) on how to quilt. It seemed very precise, and all articles told me I needed a whole bunch of fancy tools and cutters to get started. Well, I wasn’t going to out and buy all that just for one home-made blanket… So I set to work on my own path.

I started by roughly working out how many patches I would need. Clearly I’m not great at maths, as I ended up making a blanket about 2 feet bigger than planned! I cut the patches 17cm x 17cm, only because I already had some patches that size that I picked up from a thrift shop from Margaret River in WA. (These patches have come from all over Australia, Mackay QLD, Sellicks Beach SA, Margaret River & Albany in WA…and some are even from IKEA so who knows where they’ve been! Sweden?)

The patches

So, once all 112 (i think..?) patches were cut out, roughly square, with my pinking shears, I ironed them all nice and flat!

I have a pink iron! ooh..la la!

I then got to sorting the patches into order. I planned to stitch them into rows then stick all the rows together. Clever hey…

Sebastian loves to help…and nap…

I had to make sure I wasn’t going to have any of the same patches next to each other in each row, this was a bit tricky, because I cut out random amounts of each swatch of fabric I had. There was no method to my madness here, I literally just sat and chopped whatever I wanted until I had enough… Probably re-think this if you plan to make your own…

Chopped, sorted! BAM

Then I started stitching the rows together. I encountered a few issues here with my thread tension because I was sewing different fabrics together. I’d suggest sticking with a simple cotton, because it’s really not worth the headache.

Pinning action..

Stitchin’ rows..like a pro

Who needs perfectly symmetrical squares… not me!

Once all rows were stitched together I ironed it all to make it nice a pressed :).

Flat Chat!

This is the part where I realised I’d made it too big and that I now needed to come up with something else to act as my stuffing within the quilt. I was initially just going to use an ‘el cheapo blanket from Ikea… buut it was now too small to be my quilt filling 😦

Never fear! I had on hand a king size mattress protector that i bought for 5 bucks 4 years ago! It would do perfectly! So I cut it slightly bigger on all sides to allow for my patches and also for a border! WALAH! So industrious…

Simba likes it… and YES i’d been shopping at Forever new…

I used a single sheet, I already had, which was also brand new (unsure where it came from as we don’t have a single bed?),  as the backing fabric for the quilt. I used a pink cotton to ‘quilt’ all three bits together as I realised it wasn’t going to work in my machine.. didn’t plan that well. But, my hand stitching method worked well, looks funky and didn’t take that long at all!

Then I got to those edges! Everything I read said that you had to sew one side of the edging down with the machine then hand sew the other side… I aint got time for that! So, I clevery devised a way in which I could sew both sides at the same time! Rocket SCIENCE! BAZINGA!

Awwww I’m so tricky!! Tricky Trickster!

In a nut shell I ironed a long strip of fabric in half and hugged it around the raw edge of my quilt! Clever or what!

Obviously there’s something more interesting happening over there…

I stitched down the edges and WALAH I was done!! I used two different fabrics for the edges too, for a bit of contrast (and because I ran outta fabric…HA!)

Finished!

So sentimental 🙂

I’m so pleased with the end result!

After 10 years, its done!

I Love Pink Stripes!

I’ve had this top for quite a few years now. I have always loved the pink and white stripes!

Sorry about the bad pic…I have my nighty on under it too..

Safe to say, I really did not like this top any more. It was a bit out dated and the flappy frill things were just weird. Plus it was WAY too long.

So, I chopped off the frills, and used an existing top made from a similar jersey style fabric to cut out the template for my new singlet.

Stitching the seams

I stitched the side seams and overlocked the edges to prevent fraying and make my new top look ‘profesh’.

I really struggled with the finicky seams around the arms, so I didn’t hem them. The fabric wont fray so I left them like so.

Who needs a hem!?

I had to hand stitch the shoulders which didn’t take long. And wallah! I now have a funky new singlet!

Awkward posing…

Welcome!

Hello!

As my very first blog post I’d like to tell you all a bit about myself and about Fancy Nanna!

My name is Karla, and i live in Perth, Western Australia. As per the Ábout Me’ section of my page, I’m interested in so many things! At the moment i am really passionate about creating things from not a lot, and upcycling/re-furbing/re-fashioning anything i can! I don’t like to buy ‘new’ all the time (if i can help it), and i want to do my best to reduce my own consumerism, by living within my own means and by utilizing the skills that i have learned from my mother and grandmothers’ to do so! Hence where the name ‘Fancy Nanna’ originated – it is these women who inspired me to live in this way.

I’m hoping you enjoy reading about my adventures! i assure you, there has and will be many! In the mean time, perhaps think about how your own Grandmother’s/Nannas lived. Perhaps you have a ‘Fancy Nanna’ in the family too!

~ Karla a.k.a Fancy Nanna ~