Saturday, October 30, 2010

Repurpose Long Sleeve Into A Bag (Part 1)


What to do with unwanted old clothing? Rather than throw them away, why not turn them into something useful. Since I'm a bag lover, I've decided to transform this piece of clothing into a beauuuutiful bag.

I've made some sketches & draw out the pattern. The design is inspired by retro bags with boxy shape & images that has unisex appeal.


You can use a lid cover to draw a curve (one of my not so fancy but useful tool:). The finished size of the bag is as on the sketch paper above.

Here's the cut out parts for making the bag. For the lining, I used an old bed sheet. The gusset is fused with thick interfacing & other cut outs are fused with lightweight interfacing.



I cut out the buttoned front part of the long sleeve to make a pocket for the outer fabric.


A piece of lining is sewn to the back of it. An easy way to make a pocket.


Another piece of the outer fabric is stenciled with a moose silhouette. 

Here's how to stencil on fabric:

1. Draw the outline of an image of your liking on a piece of paper. Stick a brown tape to the back of the paper. Cut out the image using a sharp knife. Make sure you cut along the lines.


The back side of the paper looks like this...


2. Position the paper stencil on top of the fabric. 


3. Now you can start painting inside the stencil area with fabric paint. I lift off the stencil immediately after painting & let the paint dry for  a few minutes. (Drying time varies depending on the size of the painted images)


4. Iron the fabric on the back side to set the colour. You can reuse the stencil a few times, so don't dump it in the bin yet. 

Now that's a cool moose & I'm amused!

Here's a couple of moose :)

I'll be posting part 2 soon.

4 comments:

  1. Can't wait to see the rest of the bag construction.. loving the buttoned pocket idea..

    I have to ask..?? why moose? :D

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  2. why moose? I thought of drawing butterfly, but too girly pulak, a lion...garang pulak..hehe. Then I opt for mr moose because I like the twig like antlers so I can perch any embellishment on those twigs like a bird button. But I forgot to buy the bird button yesterday :P. I end up buying lots of zippers...huhu

    Part 2 is on the way...

    ReplyDelete
  3. I asked because I've seen few other projects online, and they also used moose for the stencil part.. since I have never tried my hand at stenciling, I wondered if maybe there's something about moose and stencil.. :) to me the antlers part seem hard to stencil, I have this idea that it might leak and ruin the whole fabric.. hehehe I think maybe toadstool might be easier to stencil.. no??

    embellishing sounds interesting.. can't wait to see what you decide nanti.. *giddy with excitement*

    ReplyDelete
  4. Yup! There must be something about moose & stencil:)I just lightly painted the antlers part. Carefully & slowly. Yes...go for the toadstool. You can sew white buttons to represent the white dots. Or why not make a simple monogram stencil. Nice & simple.

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