Birthday presents for all ages

This summer, I made presents for four different gals -- one turning five, and three others turning, well, many years older than that.  And a couple of those presents led to little gifts for other women who weren't actually having birthdays.  Such is life.

For my sister, I sewed a bunch of project bags in which to keep her various knitting projects.  She just wanted very simple, unlined drawstring bags, and I was happy to oblige.  Here are two of the three I made, from fabric my Aunt Janet found me at her friend's garage sale:

And where is the third one?  Apparently, she GAVE IT AWAY.  Yes, it was to our grandmother, but STILL.  Hee hee.  But seriously, I fully supported the regifting --  our grandmother was visiting from Arizona and carrying her knitting project around in a plastic grocery bag.  As if!  So, when Erin came to visit me in Michigan a few weeks later, I made her another replacement bag.  This one I made with a  round bottom, so it's a little more interesting than the flat ones. The fabric was from my inherited stash.

Then, when we were in Texas a few weeks after that, Erin talked me into sewing our mom a project bag.  Apparently, Erin didn't think the bag Mom had been using (not sure what) was acceptable.  We found these cute fabrics in Erin's dusty fabric stash and I whipped one up at Erin's house one afternoon.  I seriously want more of these adorable fabrics!

For my friend Julie, I made some little zipper pouches out of oilcloth to hold her essential oils.  For those, I roughly followed this tutorial, but changed the dimensions.  I ended up making three bags, but only photographed two of them.  The third one was made from the green polka dotted oilcloth that the first two bags are sitting on in this terrible backlit photo.

When my friends Heather and Ivette saw the pouches, they immediately asked for pouches of their own.  Heather wanted one for her essential oils, and Ivette wanted one to put her camera and keys in when she goes to the beach.  I didn't photograph Heather's polka dotted bag, but here is a shot of Ivette's zipper pouch.

Next, my niece Maisie turned five years old.  She is totally obsessed with all things horse-related, so I made her a fun little tote bag for traveling with some of her herd.  It will not, however, fit the horse that NanaB gave her for her birthday.  That sucker is about two-feet tall and three feet long!  Anyhow, I had to go to three different fabric stores to find good horse fabric, so I hope she liked the bag!

Finally, last week I sewed my friend Sandra a lens cap cozy to put on the strap of her camera.  She is a professional photographer, but I have personally witnessed her shoving her camera's lens cap in the pocket of her jeans on many occasions.  Surely this will be cooler, right?  

Here is the cozy from the back, to show how where the strap feeds through.

I found the tutorial for this lens cap cozy here, but I think it originally appeared on the Crafty Staci blog.  I wasn't able to find it in her archives, which makes me think it was intentional removed.  I still want to give credit where credit is due though.