Making Gifts and Making Do

A dear friend of mine is having her birthday today.  I wanted to make her a gift, and ended up making 3 from things I already had on hand.  I made a little scrapbook, a lavender blossom sachet and a monogrammed linen handkerchief.  

Here you can see the binding on the scrapbook.  I did it with bamboo skewers.  They are very inexpensive.  And HERE is the link where I learned how to do this!  I used some scrapbook papers I have that I bought on sale a long time ago at JoAnn Fabrics in a "stack."  They come in very handy.  The cover is decorated with pieces of fabric that I sewed onto some cardstock and then sewed the cardstock onto the cover. 

This is the sachet.  For those of you who might not know what that is, a sachet is something that smells very nice and you can hang it in your closet or tuck it into a clothing drawer to make everything smell lovely.  This one is made just with two layers of cotton fabric that I sewed together.  The easiest method I have found is to lay two pieces of fabric, right sides together, then draw the heart shape on it.  Then, either by hand or on the sewing machine, I sew all around on the drawn line, leaving a couple inches open on the straight side for stuffing.  Trim the seam, turn it right side out and press carefully.  Then I put the lavender blossoms in (Thank you, April and Eva) and stitched the opening shut.  Next, I sewed a ruffled lace all around and put on a ribbon for hanging and a ribbon bow for decoration.  Voila!

Here is the hankie.

I have some handkerchief weight linen I bought several years ago.  I cut out a 10 inch by 10 inch square and sewed all around using this decorative stitch.  Then I just trimmed off the excess.  I found a pretty letter A online, printed it out, and then drew it on the fabric and embroidered it with two strands of embroidery floss.  I am pleased with the result.  

For Christmas, we received a gift through Amazon.com that came in this nice box.  The top was damaged by the note card taped on, so I just used rubber cement and put on a piece of pretty scrapbook paper to cover it up.  I added a personal note and a rubber band.

I hope she will like it!

Linked to Simple Lives Thursday #131 

And the Homemaker Hop!