4 Eco Friendly Waste Free Gifts to Give and Sew

hi there I'm Virginia Lindsay a ginger cake patterns and design and today I'm going to share with you four ideas for like a less waste eco-friendly gifts to give this holiday these are also great for any time of year for gifts to give yourself or to your family and friends I'm really love these I'm gonna make well I'm already I'm gonna share two new ideas and then I'm going to share two ideas that I've made in the past that are like gifts that keep giving to me that I've used so many times and that I've given to family and friends a bunch of times that I think are just wonderful also I'd like to introduce you to my sponsor Skillshare Skillshare is an online platform with over 25,000 classes for creatives they're really great they're like in these little short segments so you take a class there are five 10-minute classes in segments so I've really been enjoying taking them with my link down below you get to three months of Skillshare so be sure to check that out and then little later I'm going to tell you about what class I'm taking now but my first idea is my everyday cloth napkins now I've been using these for years I've made probably for my own family I have about 24 of them that we just keep in rotation all the time and I don't use like fancy fabric I don't in fact these are from vintage sheets that's the set right here but I just have a mixture and we just this is what we eat with every day and my tutorial my video tutorial which is right I'll share the link right here on my blog on my channel that shows you how to make these really fast little mitered corners so they're finished they're pretty they're so useful and then on my blog I'm gonna give you the link to my blog post I did a while back that gives you free printables for everyday cloth napkins and here is a picture of that is is to make cloth grocery bags and this tutorial is another one that I made before it's probably my most popular video and this pattern is part of my book sewing to sell which you can purchase with the link below but the video does show you how the pattern works it's not super complicated you could easily draft your own pattern it takes two 1/2 yards of fabric what I usually do is I will buy a yard and a half of cotton fabric like two sets that I really like that coordinate like for example you know I did this triangle fabric and this cute like fruit fabric and I made you make three at a time and then you can give them to your family and friends I've given them to my mom I've get them to my best friend and you just kind of roll them up and present them in this cute little way and then there they're awesome like they're easy to take around and I have been using mine for years now every week when I go to the grocery store I take my cloth on my cloth bags since I do have 4 kids I take a bunch of other cloth bags too but we have been using them and I just think they're really great it's they're nice and sturdy they're fast to make and here is the link to that video I think you guys would really love giving that as a gift this year it's quick anyway so that's a great idea too to keep in mind as something to give and then you can you know make a cute presentation of it too so the new things I'm going to show you are I'm going to make these little face wipes and these are so nice you know when you buy these like I makeup remover face wipes from the store they're like Neutrogena or like Walmart has some or they are this kind of like cloth a material and they have chemicals on them which I'm not like super I don't not super opposed to the chemicals I mean I think that they use some pretty nice stuff but I just don't think it's necessary and especially because it's just I whenever I'm like emptying the garbage for my kids it's like full of these makeup wipes because I have two teenagers two teenage daughters and they don't wear tons of makeup either so I just feel like something like this would be better and I have seen all these reusable makeup wipes on the computer and I thought I can make these myself easily there's lots of tutorials to do this so it's not the most original but I'm going to show you my way of doing it and I think you'll really love it it's fast it's easy it makes a whole bunch at once and then you can kind of give it in this adorable little bundle little stocking stuff stuffer so I think that's really cute baby parrot with some homemade eye makeup remover there's a lot of recipes out there I'll share my favorite down below so I'm going to show you how to do that in a minute and then the last thing I'm going to show you how to make is this really fun popcorn bag and that is so cute I'm excited about it so and it really works so let's begin and we'll start doing some sewing [Music] okay so the first thing you're gonna do is cut out two pieces of just quilting weight cotton fabric 100% cotton they're going to be 20 inches by 12 inches and then you're gonna lay them right sides together smooth out the wrinkles press them if you'd like to they're really nice a really nice um smooth finish and then we're going to go ahead and pin them to put them together we're going to sew these two pieces together around the perimeter in a minute so pin in the corners starting out get nice and flat and then pin all the way around but you're gonna leave an opening of about five inches four and a half five inches right here on one end okay so now I've sewn them together you can see there as the side it was and this is the size just a little bit easier for you to see the UM thread and you're gonna clip the corners all four corners need to be clipped and this makes the turning out if the corners look a little nicer be sure though not to clip the the seam that you made the thread that you sewed because that will be make holes in your bag and now turn it right-side out through the opening go ahead and give it a nice turn out here you got to get into those corners is the biggest thing you can use your finger but really you're probably gonna need we're gonna need to get my chopped my um chopstick out because that'll really make the corners look nicer so just take your chopstick poke it in there chopsticks are very useful in your sewing room if you don't have one in here in your sewing room already and into all four corners the chopstick I'm gonna push gently but not so hard that it pokes through okay and then you want it we're gonna press you need to make sure the seam is nice is all the way rolled out meaning you when you press it together that there's the seam is it's all the way at the edge and not kind of folded under there so now we're gonna press and here is the pressed piece and I did go ahead and sew across that opening all the way across that top edge so that that opening is now closed and you're going to fold now we're working on the side that's going to be the exterior and you fold it over and that that yellow is the lining and the stripe is the exterior so you fold it over about three inches and then fold it again so that makes this little rectangle and we're going to pin it together on the sides you're just going to sew on the two sides so a couple pins on the side and on this side a few pins and then sew down these two edges not across the bottom or the top just the two sides pants down the sides I'm going to clip my threads real quick I'm not clipping the corners here just clipping the threads no corner clipping at this stage and now turn it right-side out get those corners again as well as you can and then just the top flips over like that you have your little popcorn envelope and you're gonna put about a half a cup of popcorn right in there just pour it in there let it be kind of in the middle put it this side up the envelope side up into the microwave for two and a half minutes it's gonna be great and here it is in the microwave so I wanted to show you my class I'm taking it Skillshare it's called style your space creative tips and techniques for interior design and I'm really loving it here is some some footage of the intro like I've said before a skill chair is only $8.99 a month and you get the first two months free with my link down below so be sure to click on that and try it out over 25,000 classes all sorts of great things on design computers hand lettering photography you guys are really gonna like this I think it's just a great platform I'm really proud to be part of it like I've said before the classes are nice and short easy to watch and I'm really loving it and I think you will too so give it a shot and now we're gonna work on the face cleaner so washable face cleaners so I found this piece of it's like a bar it's actually called a bar cloth and it's a piece of chenille fabric that I found at the dollar store and I'm going to use that as my basic fabric for the facecloth you don't always have to go all the way to the fabric store I'd wanted to go I would like to have gone there and gotten some nicer softer chenille but it turns out that this worked perfectly fine and it was only $1 which I loved the first thing you have to do though is cut off any kind of seams created if you're going to use a piece if you're going to reuse a piece like this and so that's really easy to do to get your piece prepared and this piece is I washed it first of course and I think it'll be a really good in fact I know it's gonna be a good good use for this so I'm gonna now get a piece of fabric a fat quarter is fine and this is nice and soft enough like I said before so let's take this fat quarter of fabric this is just 100% cotton fabric just a simple fat quarter quilting weight and we're gonna put these two pieces right sides together you know both sides are fine for the chenille but the for the quilting cotton you need to make sure you have right sides facing and then I'm going to get my pattern piece and I'm going to trace on as many of these circles as I can onto the fabric so I'm going to get my pencil and start tracing these on actually the pencil isn't working all that great so instead I'm gonna go ahead and trim off the that the the extra of the quilting weight fabric and then I'm going to use I'm gonna trace on the other side I'm just gonna use this fabric marker here this is going to mark a little bit better and since we're going to be cutting inside of the this marking you're not going to see this so it doesn't matter if you want to use you know a sharpie or whatever you want to use to really show your marking of the pattern piece that'd be better so just do a circle after circle along this quilting cotton and one thing you want to be sure to do and you can hear I'm going to mark my openings it's about an inch and a half opening make sure you get that mark nicely so that when you're doing the sewing you don't have to go back and pick out little pieces to create an opening with your seam ripper so with this piece of fabric now the measuring of this piece is 18 length by 15 height so 18 by 15 and I can only fit I can fit 15 of my circles onto this with some with some fabric waste but I'm doing this because it's the size of my of my um that was the size of that bar cloth that I bought but you know maybe a more accurate size would be something more like 20 by 12 and you wouldn't have any waste if you're gonna buy some yardage so here I got all of my circles done see this last one won't fit on the bottom all my circles are done and now I'm going to take a pin and put him through each one of the circles to hold them all in place and once I have that done we're gonna head over the sewing machine one thing over there that I didn't show you was that I did put openings I went back and put openings on all the pieces so that I know not to skip those because that's a pain if you have to then pick out the seams so what I'm going to do is just start I'm instead of using this for my to use for my needle I'm actually going to use that at the edge of my foot if you can see that so the circle is actually on the edge of the foot instead of you know where the needle is that's a little tricky but you can't you'll get the hang of it and that's to give us a good seam allowance and if you haven't sown circles before just slow your machine down and just take it a little bit maybe a little faster a little bit at a time and these don't have to be perfect circles which is kind of nice because you're just using them to you know clean your makeup off or for little face scrubs so there's one and I do like to cut the clip my scenes and between each one there's real quick you would think with so many scissors I would have them I would have a pair right there but I don't okay and then start over again backstitch and then I come back to that line right there that I've marked for myself and I stop okay now when I get through this top line I do these four then I will I'm going to cut them out just along the edge and then I'm gonna start it on the next layer and that's because it gets to be too it's too tight to have to do all of it at once so when you get through the layer you know it's a line of them go ahead and cut it out and then do the next line and that makes it a little easier okay so here's a line I was telling you about I'm just gonna cut one out so you can see there's the opening so I'm gonna keep I'm gonna use this line that I created to show I'm actually gonna cut a little inside that line so my seam allowance is a little smaller except at the opening area because I want plenty of space to turn it under okay so I'm gonna cut out this one in a minute but here we go and then you have the opening and you just go through the opening the opening needs to be a little bit small so that you know you don't have a huge huge problem right there okay see how it looks like this with this little we're gonna fold this under so that we don't have that Raj and then I'm gonna press I have my ironing board just right here right next to my sewing machine so I pressed and now I'm gonna sew around the perimeter let's move them machine over here let's move the camera right here now you want to sell kind of close to the opening start at the opening so that closed and then you can kind of move to a bigger team allowance our bigger top okay isn't that cute and just continue on and make a whole bunch of them 15 is how many I can fit on my towel so I don't know how many you can make it once but I think that's good for a week supply for sure okay so that's it I hope you enjoyed watching and that you get to make some of these cute projects oh please give me a thumbs up if you liked this video let me know to make more like this and then also subscribe to my channel and get notifications when I make something new I would really appreciate that and then also be sure to visit Skillshare my sponsor and sign up you get two free months to look at all the classes you want this is a great time of year with the holidays coming up learn how to make something new and I hope I will see you next time thanks a lot bye-bye

Channel: Virginia Lindsay

Views: 286,250

Rating: 4.8604541 out of 5

Keywords: eco friendly DIY, waste free sewing projects, less waste sewing, sewing gift, DIY gift ideas, gifts to sew, planet love, sewing, beginner sewing, sewing tips, sewing ideas, sewing projects for beginners, christmas gifts to sew

Id: f6H_LyOS3tE

Length: 19min 54sec (1194 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2019