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10 Busy Bags To Keep Kids Busy

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I have been using busy bags to keep my children occupied since they were babies, they are 10 and 12 now. I still think busy bags would work at restaurants when they get fed up waiting for food or fed up looking at each other. Especially since phones are now a common dinner table activity it is very hard to stop them from touching their devices when every family around us is on them. I think busy bags with table top games would work wonders for those children who are not able to just sit and “people watch”.

But these busy bags are the perfect idea for younger children. I love the bags Powerfulmothering has used as they are easy to see in and quick to grab. If you are looking for busy bags for younger kids then you need to visit her blog and check them all out in this detailed article.  You could easily pop these bags together in an hour or less and it will literally give you hours of grab and go activities when you are out and about, travelling or unable to muster the energy to parent.

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Make Your Cross Stitch into an Iron On Patch

A while back I made a little rainbow cross stitch pattern and I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it, so I turned it into a patch. My idea was that it could be used on a jacket or backpack, or you could add a pin to the back and wear it temporarily on a shirt or elsewhere. 

But what if you want to make your design more permanent? Is it possible to turn a piece of cross stitch into an iron-on design?

It turns out yes, it is, and Sirious Stitches has done it so I didn’t have to try to figure it out on my own. 

The way they did it was by using HeatnBond, an iron-on adhesive that attaches fabrics without sewing. There was still sewing involved to finish the edges of the cross stitch fabric and make it look like a purchased patch. The post shows how to do this by hand or with your sewing machine. (I just did blanket stitch edging on mine, which doesn’t look like a “real” patch but is also a lot faster.)

Once you have the patch prepared it’s a pretty easy matter of using the fusible adhesive to the back of the patch so you can then iron it onto whatever jacket, pair of jeans, bag or whatever else you might want to add it to. 

I guess I’m a little paranoid about the washability of cross stitch projects, though you could hand wash anything with an iron-on cross stitch patch as you might need to with a purchased iron-on patch, anyway. But this does look really cool and is a great option if you know you want to permanently add a cross stitch patch to a garment of bag. 

Get the full tutorial over at Sirious Stitches. Would you add an iron-on cross stitch patch to something? I’d love to hear what you would use this technique for!

[Photo: Sirious Stitches]