Welcome to the Craft Room—a cozy corner of our simple living blog where creativity meets purpose. Here, you’ll find a curated collection of sewing, paper crafts, and woodworking projects designed to inspire your hands and enrich your home.
Whether you’re stitching up reusable household items, crafting heartfelt gifts with paper, or building small wooden treasures, these projects blend timeless techniques with modern simplicity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned crafters alike, every tutorial emphasizes sustainable materials, practical outcomes, and the joy of creating something uniquely yours.
Let’s make crafting a part of your simple living journey—one project at a time. Ready to get started? Dive in and discover how crafting can add beauty, functionality, and fulfillment to your daily life!
I hope you guys had fun making your pincushions last week. We had a great time and everyone finished their project here at the house. So, now that we have your pins and needles all organized we’re going get on with another useful project. Making hotpads. There are a million and one ways to make … Read more
I hope you had a great time last week making your needlebooks. We had 8 girls, a couple of moms and 7 boys who played Risk and Clue! We had a really great time. We didn’t quite finish the books, so the girls took them home to finish them. I can’t wait to see them. For … Read more
Our first project for Summer Sewing School is to make a needlebook to keep all of your needles organized. Depending on how you design your needlebook you will learn how to sew on a button and how to sew a blanket stitch, a whip stitch, a running stitch and a back stitch. Supplies Needed: Two 9″ … Read more
There are a few basic hand stitches that everyone should know. You will be amazed at how much you can do with these few stitches. If you are stitching an item that will not be washed you do not have to use real knots. Thread your needle with both ends of the thread so that you … Read more
This week is preparation week for our Summer Sewing School. Since this class is geared toward non-sewers I wanted to give everyone time to get their supplies together. I’ll repost the supplies each week for the next week, so don’t think you have to have everything the first week. If your just starting here’s some … Read more
Note: I’ve mentioned before that all my boys have various levels of sewing ability. They all have learned to at least sew a button and do some simple mending. So while most of the stories I draw on will be about Phoebe since she is by far the most proficient sewer, please remember that sewing … Read more
This weekend our local homeschool group sponsored a graduation ceremony for any seniors who wanted to participate. This was the first time we have been able to go, it was very touching. There were 10 students participating, I personally knew all but 2. There was a video presentation for each student that each family put … Read more
Phoebe and I have finally ironed out all the details for the Summer Sewing School. At least I hope we have. I wanted to be sure that the projects were, in fact, something that an elementary or jr high child could not only do but also enjoy doing. Phoebe helped me quite a bit with this. … Read more
Since we homeschool we have the freedom to arrange our schoolwork in a way that works best for us. We’ve done it all… schooled year round with a predetermined schedule; schooled year round because that’s just how life worked out that year; started school after labor day, took holiday from Thanksgiving until New Years and … Read more
We have some dear friends whose oldest son is getting married in a few weeks. Carl and I love weddings and try really hard to make the gift that we give something that is truly useful – something that goes beyond picking a gift off of a registry. Because sometimes newlyweds really don’t know what they … Read more
On Friday afternoon Phoebe and I ditched all real work and made some baby shower gifts for a friend who is expecting her first baby. We grabbed some onesies and cloth diapers at the store and went to work. I’ve always used cloth diapers as burp rags, but apparently this has eluded Phoebe since she … Read more
For the vast majority of our marriage, Carl and I have used a “cash” only system for budgeting our money. It works well, if we don’t have the cash for something we just don’t get it or we save until we do have the cash for it. What I haven’t done so well in the … Read more
We, as in Phoebe and I, decided that the girls needed matching Christmas dresses this year. Because of their age difference, we had a hard time finding matching patterns. So we used several different patterns and altered them… it’s good that I have a thing for NOT following instructions. The rest of the photo shoot: … Read more
When I started sewing, I really knew nothing. I knew I needed needles and thread, pins, scissors, a sewing machine and fabric, of course. But I didn’t really know what kind of scissors or pins to buy. I made a few buying errors along the way that served as teaching tools. I hope with the following … Read more