Repurposed Pajama Pants into Toy Storage

 

I've started 2015 off on a crafty foot. This project has been rolling around in my head for some time. I snagged one of the legs on these cute pajama pants about a year ago and put a huge hole on one side.  The fabric was too cute to throw out so I salvaged them long ago and tucked them in my sewing bin.

 

My original plan for these was to make shoe bags, for when I travel. I just hate putting dirty shoes on top of clean clothes in my suitcase. I thought it would be super easy to sew a few bags out of the legs of these pj's.

 

But then I had kids and well, things change! For Christmas this year, Harper received some great building blocks, but they were packaged in a cardboard box that didn't make a great storage container. My options were to find a bin (like everything else in the house) but then I would need to find a home for the bin on a shelf.

 

So here we go, I've photographed on my iPhone a quick tutorial on making a simple storage bag that we will use for Harper's building blocks.

Utilizing the already nice hem on the bottom of the pajama pants, I measured down 12 inches and made a mark across the leg where I cut the fabric. The existing hem will be the top of my bag. All I need to do is sew the bottom and figure out how to add a closure to the top.

I used pins to hold the fabric in place and sewed a straight stitch along the new bottom of my bag.

To give my bag a flat bottom I lined up the bottom seam with the side seam and sewed a straight stitch along the corner.

Then I snip the extra fabric. I added a few more stitches along the corners and seam to reinforce the seams since I know this bag will take a beating with the kids.

 Squared bottom. Easy peasy.

There are lots of options for sealing the top.  Drawstring, Velcro, button holes, zipper? I chose something super easy and attached a coordinating fabric ribbon to the center of one of the sides.

 Again, I attached it really good with both a straight stitch and a zig zag stitch.

Knowing my quick sewing job wasn't the prettiest I decided to cover up the messy stitches with a decorative button.

I chose to hand sew the button over the ribbon to cover up the messy sewing job, but I could have certainly just hot glued this. It isn't a functional piece, purely decorative.

I liked the way the pink thread looked against the teal button.

It's a winner. Harper said, "ohh!" when I showed her the bag.