Memorial Moments - Pillow Tutorial

This is a great, easy, and fast keepsake. It would be a great project for mother's day, upcoming grandparents day, or even a fun slumber party craft activity.

Want to do it? Let's go.

First you need one square of white cotton duck fabric per pillow with one fun patterned fabric the same size. You can do them any size that you desire.  These pillows that I made are relatively small because they were for relatively small people. You will also need some fiber fill to stuff inside of your pillow. I stole my filling from an old pillow that I had saved a long time ago. You will also need fabric crayons or markers.

First let your children decorate the white cotton duck with the crayons. We also used some permanent markers because they grabbed them while I wasn't looking. Follow the directions on the crayon or marker box to heat set the design.

Next place the right side (the side you just colored on and the pretty side of the decorative fabric) together and sew around three sides. Leave a large hole in the fourth side.

Turn the pillow inside out where the decorative sides are showing and have your personal slaves stuff them while wearing princess gowns.

Stitch the last side closed using a whip stitch or your sewing machine and your pillows are done.

We did three pillows with a 5,4, and 2 year old in about 20 minutes. That's some quick memory making action!

If you want to do this for a group activity such as a sleepover or girl scout thing than I would sew all the pillow forms in advance, let them decorate them, and then stuff them and sew shut.

If you make this, send me a picture! I want to see!

Recycled Gift Bag

Sometimes I hate seeing how much trash we have as a family of five. There are often days that we use an entire trash bag in one day. Lately I'm trying to throw less away. I'm saving anything glass and trying to at least let my girls play and destroy with anything cardboard. Now if I could just figure out what to do with those pesky CapriSun packages.......

I also hate buying gift bags because they cost so much now and they just get throw away! So I decided to make a gift bag out of CapriSun packages. I've made purses out of the packages before but never a gift bag. Plus after you give the gift, they can use it as a tote or purse.

I made this one for a little girl that was receiving a tea set and needed a medium sized bag for the gift. It required about 27 packages to sew. No matter how hard I tried to keep all the juice packages after the princesses drank them, a lot of them went into the trash on accident and a few of them were actually left in the backyard because the princesses thought the dogs would like some juice. At the last minute I discovered that I was a few short and had to tear apart the house looking for stray packages.

I simply overlapped the edges and used a zigzag stitch to piece them together. It was an easy project but required a lot of sewing machine needles because they dulled or broke easily. Plus my sewing machine being a direct descendent of satan didn't help the matter.

I used large pink rick rack to make a girly handle and it was done! Quick and easy! Green and good for you since CapriSuns are preservative free.