Sew a Wildlife Rescue Pouch from Fleece Scraps

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

Your local wildlife rescue wants your fleece scraps!

Not as-is, of course, because what would be the fun in that? Rather, if there’s an organization near you that rescues orphaned or injured wildlife for rehabilitation, it probably needs as many of these simple, easy-to-sew fleece pouches as you can make.

Wildlife rescues use fleece pouches to contain small and baby animals in a way that keeps them feeling safe and comfortable. It mimics the type of pouch that a marsupial animal will be familiar with, and recreates the feeling of a nest for other animals. It helps keep animals comfortably contained while they recover, and gives them a sense of security that a cage doesn’t.

Requiring only four straight seams, these fleece pouches are also incredibly easy to sew. If you’ve got a beginner or young sewist, this is a great first project!

The potential for scrapbusting, though, is my favorite part! I don’t usually like to work with fleece, so the scraps from my few and far between fleece projects tend to linger. This latest batch of pouches, though, helped me usefully get rid of all the last scraps from the mermaid, shark, and mermaid skeleton snuggle sacks that I sewed for my kids last Christmas. That mermaid skeleton, especially, required a lot of inconvenient cuts into a giant length of white fleece, so I am THRILLED that it is now out of my fabric bin for good!

Here’s what you need to make your own fleece pouches to donate:

• scrap fleece. The smallest pouch that my local wildlife rescue uses is 4″x4″, which means that the smallest fleece scrap that I can use are approximately 5″x9″. The largest pouches they need are approximately 12″x12″, so my largest scrap cuts are approximately 13″x25″. You can generally use any size between those two dimensions.
• measuring and cutting tools. After catching my teenager, the most responsible person in the family after me, in the act of using my favorite fabric scissors to cut a price tag off a shirt, I recently bought a new pair of fabric scissors and I changed my family scissors rule to forbid ANYONE ELSE FROM USING THESE SCISSORS. I don’t care what you need them for–you cannot use my scissors! You want to beat up a pair of scissors? Buy yourself a pair to beat up, because you’re staying far away from mine.
• sewing supplies. Because the orphaned baby raccoons don’t care, I like to use this project to finish up half-empty bobbins and my grossest neon orange thread.

Before you begin, contact the wildlife rescue that you have in mind and ask them if these pouches are an appropriate donation and if so, what sizes they prefer. These are the pouches and sizes that my local wildlife rescue has requested, but your rescue may want something different depending on the types of wildlife they commonly encounter. It’s very bad form to burden a non-profit with stuff they don’t want, so do your research!

If your local wildlife rescue doesn’t need any fleece pouches, I’ve included the mailing address of my local rescue at the end of this post.

Step 1: Cut fabric scraps to size.

The whole point of a big back deck is to make a big mess on it!

For each pouch, you will need two pieces of fleece that are the same size. Here are the dimensions of pouches I most commonly sew, based on what my local wildlife rescue requests:

• 4″x4″ pouch: two pieces of fleece that are 5″x9″.
• 6″x6″ pouch: two pieces of fleece that are 7″x13″.
• 6″x8″ pouch (opening on the long side): two pieces of fleece that are 9″x13″.
• 8″x8″ pouch: two pieces of fleece that are 9″x17″.
• 12″x8″ pouch (opening on the short side): two pieces of fleece that are 9″x25″.

Because my local wildlife rescue tends to need the larger sizes more, I like to start cutting the largest sizes I can first, then gradually move down the list as my scrap sizes also diminish.

Since the sizing also only needs to be approximate, you can also eliminate waste by cutting pieces between any of these sizes.

Step 2: Sew each piece into a pouch.

Fold each fleece piece in half (halve the long side of each piece), then sew down each of the two sides adjacent to the fold. Trim all thread.

You’ll have a simple pouch with an open end opposite the fold. You’ll need two of these for each wildlife rescue pouch.

Step 3: Sew the pouches together.

Turn one pouch right side out, then place it inside a second pouch. The right sides of the pouches should now be facing each other, but the pouch on the outside should still be inside-out.

Sew around the top edge to sew the pouches together, leaving a few inches unsewn for turning.

Turn the pouches right sides out through that hole.

Fold the pouch that you’d like to be on the inside to the inside, and straighten the seam around the top edge by hand, finger pressing the raw edges of that unsewn opening to the inside.

Top stitch around the top edge of the pouch, sewing closed that unsewn section as you go.

Give the entire pouch another look, making sure there are no loose threads for a tiny animal to tangle in or skipped stitches that would leave a hole for a tiny animal to get stuck in.

This is optional, but I like to wash and dry my finished pouches before I donate them, just to make sure they’re squeaky clean and free of skin oils and dust and dog fur.

Above is my recent donation–not bad for a couple of hours and a bunch of scraps I was thrilled to get rid of!

If you don’t have a wildlife rescue organization near you, this is the mailing address for my local wildlife rescue:

WILDCARE, INC.

198 N. HARTSTRAIT RD.

BLOOMINGTON, IN, 47401

Here's what I did with the rest of that fleece!

P.S. I post on my Craft Knife Facebook page all. The. Time, sometimes even while I'm in Greece! Come see!

How to Sew an Envelope-Back Pillowcase

I originally published this tutorial over at Crafting a Green World.

A pillowcase with an envelope back is the easiest type of pillowcase to sew!

At least for decorative pillows! If you’re sewing a pillow for a bed, do yourself a favor and check out the “magic” pillowcase tutorial.

I like how neat and polished an envelope-back pillowcase looks, even more so than one with a zipper, in my opinion. Omitting that zipper also makes an envelope-back pillowcase much more comfortable, meaning that your decorative pillow can also perform its second most important job of Naptime Support Specialist. Or, if you have two decorative pillows, the third most important job of Footrest.

It’s very easy to make an envelope-back pillowcase from scratch, even if you’re a novice sewist. Here’s how!

Materials

To make an envelope-back pillowcase, you will need:

• pillow form. I’m using a 16″x16″ pillow for this project, but here’s an example of a 26″x26″ pillowcase that I sewed from quilting cotton.
• fabric. You’ll need three pieces of fabric approximately the size of your pillow plus 1.5″. You’ll cut two of those pieces down to size, so read through the instructions first if you have some smaller, scrappier pieces you want to use, and you’ll see how to calculate the exact yardage you need for your specific pillow.
• bias tape. You need two pieces of approximately 1/4″ bias tape, each as long as your pillow plus 1.5″. Bias tape is SUPER easy to make from scratch, so you can perfectly match your pillowcase fabric, if you’d like.
• measuring, pinning, cutting and sewing supplies.

Step 1: Measure and cut your pillowcase pieces.

Your pillow form should have a tag that gives its dimensions. If not, simply measure its length and width with a fabric measuring tape. If your pillow is rectangular instead of square like mine, you can still make an envelope back pillowcase for it; just decide which way you want the pillow oriented, and calculate, cut, and sew accordingly.

The front panel should measure one 1.5″ wider than the pillow form on both length and width if you want a snug fit like the one in these photos, and 2.5″ or even more if you want more ease. A looser fit is easier to stuff and change, but a snug fit looks nicer, in my opinion.

For my 16″x16″ pillow, my front panel is 17.5″x17.5″. Just between us, this made for a pillowcase that’s a little too snug, because I didn’t account for how fat that pillow form is! It still fits, but there’s some whiskering across the width and if it gets a lot of wear I’ll probably be mending around that applique in a few years. So let my mistake guide you, and take the fatness of your pillow form into account when deciding ease.

Each of the two back panels should be the same width as the front panel, but should be only about 2/3 of the length. The exactness of this measure isn’t terribly important, so I approximated, since 3 does not go neatly into 16. For my 16″x16″ pillow, then, each of my back panels are 11″x17.5″.

Step 2: Sew bias tape to the envelope edges of the back panels.

Sew bias tape across one width side of each of the back panel pieces, encasing the raw edge of each. These will be the edges that overlap to create the envelope closure.

Step 3: Sew the back panels to the front panel.

Whichever back panel piece you pin to the front panel first will be the outer panel once you’ve turned your finished pillowcase right sides out. I want my top panel on the outside, so I’m pinning it to my front panel first. Pin the panels right sides together.

Don’t start sewing yet! Instead, next pin the second back panel piece flush with the opposite end of the front panel, right sides together. Visually check the overlap of the envelope back to make sure you like it, and to make sure that the bias tape sides are at the overlap, NOT the far edges.

NOW you can sew!

Using a .5″ seam allowance, sew all the way around the pillowcase, sewing both back panels to the front panel. Backstitch over both ends of the overlap to reinforce them, since they’ll be pulled on whenever you change your pillowcase.

My favorite part of sewing this pillowcase is that I don’t have to leave a hole for turning, fuss with attaching a zipper, etc. It’s so quick and easy!

Clip the corners, turn right side out, press it smooth, and pop it on a pillow!

As you can see, you can do a lot of cute things with that front panel. Here, I appliqued the logo of my kid’s college onto the front panel fabric, but I’ve also pieced and quilted pillowcase fronts, and once I even used fabric markers to illustrate one. The possibilities are endless!

What are you going to put on the front of YOUR pillow?

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Make Your Own Path Tile Game from Mat Board and Markers

I first published this tutorial on Crafting a Green World.

A path tile game is a great introductory DIY board game, with tons of opportunities for creativity and infinite playability.

Tbh, I love making board and card games even more than I love playing them–and I love playing games! I really love taking a traditional game concept that’s been around forever, like chess or the Royal Game of Ur, and reskinning it with my own design, although I also have a lot of fun modifying more modern games for my own personal use; check out the Cards Against Mythology game that I made with my Girl Scout troop!

I particularly love the open-ended playability of path tile games. I love that depending on the design, the path you follow could be a highway or a water-filled pipe or a route through a cave system, and I love that you can make an all-new game just by changing the shape of the tile or the number of paths per tile. You can make up your own rules for your game, you can change the rules every time, or you can have no rules at all and just enjoy the process of building an intricate and ever-changing maze.

For this particular game, I decided that I wanted to make it for my four-year-old niece, so I wanted it to be fairly simple in shape and number of paths, and otherwise as open-ended as possible. I chose four bright colors for the paths, but otherwise kept the game un-themed so she could feel free to make up her own rules, enjoy the process of maze-building without gameifying it, or even incorporate the pieces into her own small-world play.

That means that this tutorial is for a square path tile game with four paths per square but no other theming or embellishments. Feel free to change the tile shape, number of paths, or anything else about your own game!

Materials

To make my simple version of the path tile game, you will need:

• stiff chipboard, cardboard, or mat board. I used mat board for this project because I have plenty in my stash and I’m pretty stoked about using it up. Mat board definitely made for a wonderfully sturdy game, took marker like a champ, didn’t need to be sealed, and is so easy to source that adding new tiles won’t be a problem–as long as I remember what color markers I used, lol! If you’re looking for a quick and easy game to experiment with, drawing on the blank sides of cardboard food packaging would work perfectly well. If you’re looking for something heirloom quality, you could upgrade to wood-burned and watercolor-stained wood tiles.
• measuring and cutting tools. Your tools will vary depending on your materials, but I measured with a clear plastic quilting ruler and a gridded cutting mat, and cut with a guillotine paper cutter and a craft knife.
• embellishing tools. For this project, I used a mechanical pencil to measure and draw the paths, then four colors of Prismacolor marker to color them in and a black Flair pen to outline them.

Step 1: Measure and cut your tiles and mark your paths.

The first decisions you need to make consist of what shape and size you want your tiles to be and how many paths you want per tile. If you don’t want each tile to have a top and bottom, then they need to have rotational symmetry in both shape and path endings per side. For the path endings, I accomplished this by measuring and cutting a set of 50 2″x2″ tiles, then marking paths that began 3/16th of an inch from each corner and were each 3/16th of an inch wide. There’s then a 1/4″ gap between paths on each side.

It’s tedious work to go ahead and mark every path ending on every tile, but you’ll thank yourself for it later.

Step 2: Draw out the paths.

The next decision to make is what you want your paths to look like. I have eight path endings per tile, which means that I’ll have four paths per tile. These paths can look however you want, shaped however you want. Do you want angles to fit a robot theme? Scallopy edges because your playing pieces will be boats on the water? Do you want to insert a couple of dead ends or u-turns or other tricky traffic signs? You can do anything you want!

My family of four worked together to create our 50 tiles, and I like that you can see a stylistic difference between our tiles. I liked smooth lines and curves that matched, but another family member liked a lot of wavy lines and crazy curves, and another family member even added some loop-de-loops to their paths. The game was meant to be a handmade gift that was clearly from all of us, so in this case the stylistic differences were a feature, not a bug. If you want an overall more cohesive aesthetic, decide that from the beginning.

Mat board doesn’t erase particularly well, so make yourself a few extra practice path tiles if you really don’t want any faint pencil lines or eraser marks to show while you’re figuring out exactly how you want your paths to look.

Step 3: Color the paths.

This is my favorite part of the process!

You can choose any number of colors for your paths, but I decided on four colors that would each be represented by one path on each tile. You could make your paths all the same color, or a different color for every path throughout the entire game, but I really like the impossible prospect of trying to match path colors when I play–it’s randomly satisfying, for all that you can never perfectly match every color.

Carefully color in the paths, then outline the edges in black pen.

Step 4: Play!

This is such a fun game to play, with rules that are unlimited only by your imagination–if they exist at all! Add a couple of wooden game pieces that you’ve liberated from another board game (for this game, we spray painted DnD minifigs solid colors to match the paths), then decide if you want to try to run each other off the playing field, or if you battle when you meet on a path, or if touching orange moves you back to the beginning and loses you 100 points, or if you all have to try to get to a specific spot.

To store the game, build a box out of that same mat board, or repurpose another storage container. I really like this clear acrylic one that I rehomed from a bathroom drawer because it shows off the pretty colors of the game.

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Make a Giant Upcycled Cardboard Minecraft Grass Block

 

This is an old tutorial that I recently realized that I've never shared here before! I originally published it in Crafting a Green World way back in 2017.

Why, yes, this IS an oddly specific tutorial that I’m writing here. But what can I say? If you know a kid, do me a favor and try this: leave the computer and go ask that kid if she’d like to have a giant Minecraft grass block all of her own. I’ll wait right here, because trust me–you’ll be back, and you’ll be making this, too, and here’s how you’ll do it:

1. Score some cube-shaped cardboard boxes. This is the trickiest part of the project, because most cardboard boxes aren’t perfect cubes. You can cut down a larger cardboard box, but I volunteer weekly at a food pantry, and what I did was simply keep my eagle eyes out for the perfect type of box. One day, we got in a pallet-full of I Heart Keenwah snacks, and the boxes that those snack packs come in are perfect cubes! Tape the box closed, and you’re all set!

2. Download Minecraft grass block skin vectors. Google it, Baby! You want to find vector images so that you can size them up and down and the image will stay proportionate. My I Heart Keenwah boxes were 8 inches square, and using vector images allowed me to maintain the correct sizing of the pixels that make up the block.

You will need a top, bottom, and side image for the grass block. If you’re going to use the block as a party invitation, like we’re doing, then put the party info on the top. Resize the vector images so that they just fit on the sides of the box.

3. Print the images onto used paper. Use the back sides of paper that you’ve already used once. 

4. Cut the images to size. A guillotine paper cutter is the best and quickest way to get smooth cuts.

5. Adhere the images to the box. You know how a cube goes together, right? Four sides, a top, and a bottom are what you’ll need, and don’t forget that the sides also have a top and bottom–grass above, dirt below. Use your favorite glue or double-sided tape to attach the images to the box.

6. Is it a party? Put the party invitation on top. My partner is a graphic designer, so he redid the vector for the top of the Minecraft grass block to include the details of the party invitation. You can get the same effect by simply gluing the invitation on top, or putting it into a pocket on the side of the block.

You could actually mail these invitation, although our particular plan is to doorbell ditch them on friends’ front porches. My kiddo spent so much time playing with the blocks before they were delivered, however, that we’re considering making another set to play with at the party, and for her to keep.

P.P.S. Want to know how that long-ago party went? Here it is!

P.P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

How to Clean and Refinish Antique Door Hardware

This tutorial was originally posted over at Crafting a Green World.

My house is… well, let’s call it “well-loved.” Door hardware aside, the house as a whole is wonky and inconvenient, quirky in a way that modern houses just aren’t, and whatever its quirks, I generally either genuinely like them or politely ignore them.

I do get curious about some things, though, and the four antique mortise locks on the four doors in the original part of my house are among those curiosity-inspiring objects. Although their keys are long gone, their keyholes are delightfully Victorian, but all the exposed pieces, plus the equally interesting door hinges, are covered in several thick layers of sloppily-applied paint. I don’t have any kind of yearning to restore my wonky old house to its original condition, but it would be pretty cool to clean and refurbish just those antique door fixtures, just to see what they actually look like…

So that’s what I did!

Step 1: Make sure you’re not going to get lead poisoning. 

Lead poisoning is not worth playing with, so my first step before messing with ANYTHING old, from thrift store dishes to the awesome windows I found by the side of the road last fall, is to check it with a lead swab. These came out lead-free, although I tested again every time I uncovered a new layer of paint.

Sooo… these fixtures look awful. Once you realize that I’ve been living in my house for approximately 8 years and never before so much as blinked an eye at the pitiful state of these pieces, you’ll understand how house-proud I apparently am NOT.

Step 1: Remove the fixtures from the door. 

For me, this involved muscling through five layers of paint to even get to the screw heads, and then muscling against those layers of paint to unscrew each screw. Fortunately, just a quick spray of WD-40 was all it took to get each rusty, painted-over screw turning.

You don’t need the water to be THIS soapy. I just like bubbles!

Step 2: Remove the paint. 

There are a few methods for removing paint from old hardware, but the easiest, most eco-friendly way is simply to grab a beat-up old crock pot and boil the snot out of everything. I did this out on my back deck one sunny afternoon. Set the crock pot to low, add a squirt (or fifteen squirts, in my case…) of dish soap, and walk away. A few hours later, you can fish each piece out with tongs, set it on a piece of clean newspaper, and peel away the paint or gently scrape it off. If any paint still seems stuck, put the piece back in the crock pot for another couple of hours.

When you’re finished, your piece won’t look pretty, but it WILL look paint-free!

Step 3: Get distracted and therefore make more work for yourself. 

You’re supposed to thoroughly dry each piece after scraping all the paint off. But… I don’t know. One kid might have needed help factoring a polynomial, or the other kid might have wanted me to drive her to pick up holds at the library, or maybe a friend texted me, or heck, maybe I saw a squirrel. Who knows? Whatever happened to interrupt me after paint scraping but before thorough drying, it resulted in me eventually wandering back by the deck and noticing that all of my nice door hardware that I had spent all that time cleaning off had rust ALL over it.

Pro tip: Your cleaned pieces will rust VERY quickly if not dried thoroughly!

Step 4: Remove rust from the door hardware. 

If your piece doesn’t have any paint on it, but it’s dirty and rusty, you can start here. Or if you’re like me, and you have the attention span of a gerbil, continue here! Fortunately, removing a thin layer of rust is SUPER simple. I put my metal pieces in a shallow dish, covered them with vinegar, and let them sit for a couple more hours on my deck.

After a couple of hours, I took the pieces inside and used a soft cloth and cool running water to rub away the residue and rinse off the vinegar.

THEN I DRIED EACH PIECE THOROUGHLY.

Step 5: Polish the hardware. 

Your end result isn’t going to be a gorgeous, like-new piece of door hardware. I mean, fifty years ago someone first painted over that piece for a reason, right? So I was a little disappointed, sure, but not too terribly surprised that my clean, rust-free, paint-free door hardware shows a lot of wear. The pieces are also brass-plated, not solid brass, and the brass plating has worn away in several spots.

You actually CAN re-plate antique pieces, but I’m not going to. Instead, I polished each piece with #0000 steel wool. You’ll find this in your local hardware store with the sandpaper, not with the cleaning supplies, because this is fine steel wool for polishing, not scrubbing.

Step 6 (optional): Repair and restore. 

after I had cleaned and polished the pieces, I was actually able to see a manufacturer’s stamp on the hinges that were previously completely covered with paint and crud. That particular stamp was only used between 1920 and 1934, so I’m pretty stoked!

Unfortunately, I can’t find any specific information on my mortise locks, although I do hope to restore those to functionality. Here’s a site that sells parts for several varieties of antique locks, and another site that sells skeleton keys that, while they aren’t guaranteed to work on any particular lock, aren’t so spendy that they’re not worth gambling on.

Step 7 (optional): Seal the hardware.

I did not seal my door hardware, because I’m willing to live with it a while first. My area doesn’t get terribly humid, and I’m curious to see how the hardware will fare without being sealed. If its condition starts to deteriorate, I have no problem with the extra steps of popping it back off the door, cleaning the rust off (again), and sealing it.

However, if you want to ensure that the pieces that you worked so hard on stay as nice and shiny as they look right this second, you can coat them with any sealant that works on metal. None of your options are particularly eco-friendly, but if it keeps an antique piece out of the waste stream and allows you to get by without buying new hardware, it’s a net good.

The final result isn’t door hardware that looks brand-new, but it IS door hardware that looks clean, feels authentic, and is much, much, MUCH preferable to what it looked like before!

Now I just have to scrape those same five layers of paint off of the door, too…

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!