I had planned to publish the instructions for the cozy sweater purse in my previous post titled Homemade Christmas gift ideas, to-go boxes and purses… Oh my but the post became rather long and for the sake of the sanity of my readers I put the instructions here in a separate post so it could be found more easily.

All you need to do to make this nifty little sweater gift bag/ purse is find an old knitted sweater or perhaps a nice wool seater that has been felted (or if you are like me it was mistakenly shrunk).

Take your favorite purse pattern or draw your own. I’ll post a my own free pattern here for your to print and use, please don’t repost it though, link to this blog post if you wish to share the pattern/ instructions with your own readers.

Place the top edge of the pattern along the bottom part of the sweater so that the decorative ribbing/ edge of the sweater becomes the top portion of the purse.

Place right sides together and stitch the sides and bottom of the purse. Note do not stitch the top sides of the bag that this time!

Turn right side out, clip and and press the edges so that the purse has the desired shape.
With right sides out you will now sew the top sides of the bag (the seam you are sewing should be on the outside of the bag, opposite of the rest of the bags seams).

Next cut two 8 inch strips from the sweater for the straps. Mine were 1 inch wide. If you prefer you can use cording or belting inside the strap.

If using belting or cording wrap the sweater fabric around it press with iron and hand stitch.
If you are not using belting you can sew the pieces together (wrong side out) and then turn the strips right side out after sewing them.

Place the sewed straps into the strap slits and hand sew the slits back together with the straps inserted. Fold the top portion of the bag down and you are done!

This homemade gift bag/ purse is very customizable and can be made into any shape or pattern you like. You can sew buttons or beads onto the purse for decoration or you can even iron on some decorative patches to customize the purse even more.

I found some cheap bath items that I plan to fill the homemade purses with, then I’ll give these as hostess/ host gifts this holiday!

At last the pattern I used is available for download! Simply click the link and when the photo displays righ click it and choose “save image as” – sweater-purse-pattern.jpg Print out he pattern an cut the blue outside away and your ready to begin crafting. Enjoy!

The post Recycled sweater purse and glove instructions appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

Tonight I came across a fun blog site that I was browsing. One of the articles posted was a tutorial on creating easy origami gift boxes. I thought this was a cute way for me to give some of my homemade goodies this holiday season. I was trying to learn the fold tonight and I used paper from the wasteful Victoria’s Secret catalogs. The boxes are actually really cute because of the catalog colors and print and the box is really easy to learn!

If you are trying to save money or if you just love to give homemade gifts consider recycling some of your piled up catalogs! Make some origami gift boxes and fill them with homemade goodies like truffles, bite sized cookies or fudge!

The post Homemade Gift Idea- Origami Treat Box appeared first on Updates from Ryder Family Farm.

All you need is a jar of your choice. Think about the gift recipient and decide what theme you want to use to decorate the jar. Once the jar is decorated you can fill it with strips of paper that have meaningful things written on them. For a gratitude jar you would write all the things you can remember that you are thankful for. Things that happened long ago or that were forgotten are the most memorable and touching. This is a wonderfully personalized gift just like a message in a bottle gift, that will be cherished by the recipient for many years to come!

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