Monday, December 12, 2011

Christmas Gifts

I think I'm fairly safe in posting these gifts as none of the gift recipients read my blog (to my knowledge!).
I got the idea for monogrammed totes from this tutorial I pinned on Pinterest a while back.
(I love her "big fat" letter on the front!)
I bought some more of those 3 for $6 totes at Wal-mart and also bought three sets of coordinating prints.
 I also bought coordinating ribbon to sew on the totes.  I'm thinking my total cost for each tote (and matching clutch) didn't even come to $7!
You can see in the above photo that instead of lining them this time, I made a big pocket on the back.  I did not make these to be used as purses, but rather as tote bags.  Two of the recipients are still in school, and the other one uses totes for books and misc. other stuff when traveling back and forth from her home to her job.
I really like how the little clutches turned out.  I got the pattern from this blog (another Pinterest find.) Since the blog isn't in English, I pretty much invented my own way of sewing them so that all the seams are on the inside. The first one took some figuring, but I was able to whip the second two up in less than an hour!
The purple one has a button closer, while the other two close with magnetic snaps. (I wasn't sure but that I was wasting my time on the first go-round, so I didn't want to waste time with a snap if I ended up throwing the whole thing away!)
 My daughter actually likes the button one the best -- and says if I make her one that's what she wants!
I also used both materials on the outside of the second two, instead of using material #1 as the outside and material #2 as the lining.....just me liking to change things up a bit!

2 comments:

Christa said...

I love the shape of those clutches! Did you try Google Translate for the website?

I'd love to make a few of these, so maybe you can explain how you put it together when we get together next. :)

Pamela said...

Love the font you used for the letters. The matching clutch puts the gift over-the-top. A great gift!