simple hand-made gifts

I wanted to share a couple of very simple sewn gifts I've been working on lately. They're rather common little items, but they can be embellished to one's heart's desire to make them special and unique for each recipient.

The first project is a little lavender eye pillow--a wonderful use for the lavender we harvested and dried from our garden this summer.

It is the very simplest of sewing projects--just two rectangles sewn right sides together, (leaving an open space of a few inches to turn), turn right side out, fill with flax seed and dried lavender flowers (chamomile is nice, too), then sew up the space. These seem to be loved by just about everyone, and especially by those needing a little extra TLC. The lavender is so soothing and bestows the recipient with a very tangible feeling of peace and well-being.

The second project is yet another birthday crown. They are my favorite gift for little friends these days.

Mr. Z certainly enjoyed receiving this one, and looked like quite a superstar wearing it.  I used Nicole's tutorial at Frontier Dreams for my first crown, and have been improvising a bit for each crown since then. 
For this one, I realized I could machine sew the decorations on, which saved a lot of time from the hand sewing I've done previously.

Have you seen the Handmade Holidays inspiration over at Plain and Joyful Living? I'm looking forward to the ideas that will be shared there every Monday, and hope to post a few projects myself, as we head into the holiday season. For now, we are enjoying the arrival of autumn!