a well worn gift

on july 11th my brother-in-law levi celebrated his 25th birthday. i love making gifts for those i care about, but is always so difficult to figure out gifts to make for guys.

i was going to make something different, but in the spur of the moment i was inspired to step outside the realms of patterns and whip something up.

levi is currently on a gerson diet which involves a lot of raw, raw, raw. also, levi is really interested in re-purposing things (he wants to make shoes out of old pieces of leather).

these 2 facts and the extra tidbit that levi is a fairly talented artist were my inspiration for his gift.

i took an old pair of sam's cargo pants that were way to big for him, i sliced up one of the pants legs, and had my fabric: re-purposing.

i decided (as you can see from the above picture) to create a little carrying bag for small sketch books and pencils for said sketching.

to create a more "raw" look, i sewed nothing right sides together. instead i just placed the pieces of fabric how i wanted them, and sewed.

i sewed the front to the back, leaving exposed edges. i used a small zig zag to create the slots for the pencils and the sketch books.

i wanted the carrying bag to fold 3 ways in. i designated where the folds would be, and on the "front" of the bag made an "L" for levi.

i am particularly proud of the button- also re-purposed, as it is the button from the cargo pants.
the bag/portfolio... not quite sure what to define it as, all folded up.

i apologize for the quality of the pictures, they were taken in our car on the way to levi's surprise birthday party.

as an additional side blog note, this post took 5 attempts to get published. i believe a combo of blogger and an overly filled computer caused for excruciating slow loading of pictures, which resulted in "bad error". but i stayed the course- and have now shared this project!