In a previous post I told you how I go about finding inexpensive/bargain fabric.

Now that you have some inexpensive fabric, what should you sew?

Don’t go out and buy a pattern right away. Instead, spend a little time online because there are a LOT of free patterns available.

I really like wearing aprons when I cook because I tend to make quite the mess. I have one apron that I love, but I think that I’m in the market for another one. The first place I looked for a free pattern was Craftsy. If you go under the Pattern area, type in whatever you want to search for, and then sort it by lowest price all of the free patterns will come up first. When I did a quick search on Yahoo for free apron patterns it came up with over 6 million results. Now, obviously not all of those results are actually free patterns, but you should be able to find a decent selection to look through.

Growing up my mom refused to buy me a Cabbage Patch doll. My grandma found one that had been sewn by somebody and so I played with that one at her house. Which made me wonder if I could find a pattern for one. Well, I haven’t looked through all of them, but I did find a pattern for a life-size baby doll.

There were over 14 million results for ‘Free Doll patterns’.

Finally, I did a search for ‘Free Cat Sewing Plans’ and came up with over 16 million results. Including one for this Crinkle Sack that cats love.

A lot of this stuff would probably be simple enough to make on your own without a pattern, but there are some people who are so afraid of doing something wrong that they HAVE to follow a pattern.

Now, what I like is that I can take two different patterns and mash them up together. For example, when making an apron I might find a skirt that I like on one, but prefer the top on another. Using some common sense and logic I can take the two patterns and mash them together. You just have to be brave. And remember, if something doesn’t work out you can always save the material to cut up into smaller pieces for other projects.

I know that this post today wasn’t too enlightening, but the fun thing is doing the searching yourself. Look for obscure things to sew and see if anybody else has already done it for you. When I was originally going to make Jay the first set of wing bags I couldn’t find many resources at all. There were plenty of places selling the actual bags, but nothing that could tell me how to make my own. My blog post on how to make your own wing bags gets at least one hit every week. You just never know what people are going to want to make.