And yet another bag

I've been a little obsessed with nautical lately. My whole room is based on it (the blue and white is my favorite part of the nautical vibe). Well, I wanted to make a bag for my aunt who also likes blue. I walked around JoAnn's trying to find the perfect fabric. She also likes cats and cute little houses and anything that would make you think of your first grade teacher because she was a first grade teacher.

I ended up with this:
I think she will love it for the same reasons I do, first of all, it's gorgeous. I really could just stare at it all day. Second of all, the fabric (especially the liner) is reminiscent of things from my Grandparent's house. I think she'll appreciate that. That sailboat fabric could still very well match sheets they would use in their blue bedroom. They live on the water and have all sorts of ship/sailboat/water related things around their house. Third, she can use it for anything, but specifically a sewing bag or a beach bag. I would love to take this bag to the beach. I made the straps a little longer so you can fit a beach towel in the bag and still sling it over your shoulder. It's the perfect size for a towel, a book, a bottle of water and some sunglasses...and it's easily washable so if you want to stop using it as a beach bag, sand removal is totally painless.

Pillows

We have couches that are pillow-less. Nice couches, but they need some color. My white couch is down in the toy room and my old duvet cover is on a comforter that we keep down on the couch (because the toy room is always freezing). So the blanket is dark blue with different sized circles in various shades of blue and green all over it - it's an old Ikea design, and the comforter I used through college.

And then we have these curtains hanging (also from Ikea - they used to hang in the boys' bedroom back in the apartment):
The walls of the toy room are all still white, so the curtains look great down there. Well, I decided to hunt down the other things from Ikea that matched the curtains. There was a green and white hippo pillowcase, a bright green crib sheet and a striped receiving blanket. I took the pillow case and the receiving blanket and made new pillows:

The two bigger pillows are cases with pillow forms, the smaller striped pillow is stuffed. I really love how they turned out and I love that we could reuse these things - I didn't have to buy new fabric and these things match the room so everything looks like it's being done on purpose and not just "there because we have it."

Now I'm a little obsessed with how easy it was to turn that receiving blanket into a pillowcase. I just had to fold it over and stitch up the two ends then insert the pillow form. Because the edges of the blanket were already finished, I didn't have to do any hemming! I might check out what other things Ikea has that will match next time I make a trip.