... Lavender Bags

It is Waste Less Live More week this week - http://www.wastelesslivemore.com - a great idea and something which caught my attention as, by necessity, we are being mindful of what we use and how we use it at the moment. 

We need to move house. Houses are expensive. We need to save astronomical amounts of money to move house. This means our resources are more valuable and stretched than ever. This week I am taking up the Waste Less Live More challenge because it's a good idea, it's good to not waste stuff and to spice things up I am trying to focus on those pesky tasks that we all have, things you know you probably should do but haven't quite got round to.  So this week the planet wins as I will be tying to impact on it as little as possible with my makes, I win because I get stuff and hopefully other people win as I will be sharing something every day to help you waste a bit less too.

Day 1's theme is Make It. So I am making lavender bags. Two reasons:-

1) We have needed moth repellers for our wardrobe for ages and much to my shame despite having the fabric & the lavender our clothes were left to protect themselves. It's a good idea when trying to save money to not need new jumpers because your old ones were moth food.

2) I saw a tutorial for making lavender bags the other day and it made me angry (I realise this seems a bit far fetched and you may think I need help). They had crafted beautiful hand stitched lavender bags from new fabric and said at the bottom that you couldn't refill them so when they didn't smell anymore to throw them away and make new ones. I mean really? Throwing stuff away wilfully is bad enough but something handmade that it is super easy to refresh is just plain wrong I tell you. WRONG!

So these lavender* bags are cute, easy to make and best of all can be refilled!!!

*Actually you can put all sorts of dried herbs in your bags if you have other herbs or don't like lavender. Bay leaves, dried basil leaves, mint, thyme, tansy, rosemary and wormwood will all help repel unwanted buggy guests.

Tutorial and the pattern for regular, butterfly and ukulele versions are below as pictures you can save and print out if needed. Sorry they are a bit dark, they will be updated in the week - IT issues :( To be honest they are not complicated patterns so have a go at designing your own!

A few notes on the waste less theme...

I used offcuts of fabric from other projects for these bags. Use something stiffish (my partner is a painter so I have a responsibility to find 101 uses for 10cm strips of painting linen). I save all fabric over a cm square -seriously I do! 

I dry my own lavender and other herbs - it's easy. Hang some lavender clipped from your plant up somewhere dry for a few weeks until it is crispyish. Leaves can be used too they are just not quite as strong.

I used a machine to sew mine as I had 2 lots of hand surgery recently and that rules out hand sewing but if you can hand sew them it would both look lovely and save a bit of electricity.

I hand drew the pattern and instructions as it saved tons of digital device time and was good hand therapy to boot ( only just been able to start writing again recently). Don't print out the instructions unsless you absolutley have to!

Replace the herbs in the bags about every 6 months