Crafts and such for the Homeschool Fair

Our homeschool group had a holiday fair at the beginning of the month, and we all made things to sell. Mason made some earrings. He has a good eye for design, I think. Parker made some little bundt cakes which sold very well, and I made a variety of things.

These are some of Mason's earrings:


And I used the opportunity to use up small pieces of fabric. So here's a girl's poncho made with this tute. I hemmed the bottom edge because figuring out a fringe with the corners was beyond me.

My big seller was flannel hankies in a reversible drawstring bag. I made the bags reversible using this tute from Yarn Monster. I've struggled with drawstring bags, embarrassingly, and I love this approach, which I find easy and clear. It is lined, so it uses more fabric, but the little ones stand up even without interfacing, which is kind of cool. The hankies are 10x10 (or four across the width of the flannel), and serged with a three-thread rolled hem, which came out faboulously, if I do say so myself. The corners are curved to make the serging easier.

I also made some bags without the hankies.



I also used this tute from Dragon[knit]fly which makes a very cool zippered box bag. I recommend starting by sewing around the two pieces of fabric, right sides together, leaving a hole and turning them right side out. Then I eyeballed sewing on the zipper on an already finished edge, and didn't have any raw edges on the inside.

The purple batik tote is made with pre-quilted fabric. I used some awhile ago to make my niece a zippered lunch bag -- this bag used up all the leftovers.

Two no-sew projects: I made a fleece shawl by cutting a rectangular piece and fringing the short edges with a rotary cutter. I cut a ruana from lightweight fleece (used the directions here -- search the page for Dragonmama). I have one like this that I wear often.

I have some wheat berries and since that is a bit unusual, I used them for some other products. I mixed up the grains for the Blender Pancake Mix from Urban Homemaker, and sold that with directions. I made some no-knead bread with some freshly ground whole wheat flour (and some All Purpose white flour also), and some 100% whole wheat bread with another Urban Homemaker recipe. I love this bread but have found it too crumbly for sandwiches. But with soup or as a snack, it's super, and I've had lots of compliments on it.

Some other good tutes that I thought about using but didn't are these:
Cute patchwork basket:

http://ayumills.blogspot.com/2008/05/tutorial-fabric-basket.html

Tote Bag: http://www.sewmamasew.com/blog2/?p=514

Coasters: http://allsorts.typepad.com/allsorts/2006/11/crisscross_coas.html
http://foofanagle.wordpress.com/2007/05/06/simple-coasters/

(Please excuse the bizarre formatting. I have much to learn.)