For a lot of people, summer is not “sewing season”!  Summer is a chance to do all those outdoor projects which can’t be done in cold snowy weather.  Gardening and building projects take up a lot of time, and any spare time is for summer fun:  boating, swimming, hiking, bicycling and vacations.  Here’s some quick summer sewing projects that don’t take a lot of time and help you with your projects and summer fun!

Have an old pair of jeans you can recycle?  Turn it into a pocket caddy for a bucket or gardening tools and you can easily throw it in the wash.  Old jeans also make great picnic/beach cloths.  With minimal cutting, sew some together for whatever size you want and use the pockets for a variety of items.   I used one pair of jeans for both these projects and I still have a portion of one pantleg left over for another project!

Placemats and tablecloths come in handy for your picnic/patio table.  You can make these as simple or as decorative or elaborate as you want.  Sew together some inexpensive kitchen towels from a dollar store (or recycle old ones), to make an easy-care tablecloth.

Make some cushions/pads for your patio chairs, too.  There are a number of types of foam on the market for making your own cushions/pads.  Also, if you are a quilter, you probably have lots of batting scraps to sew together for the cushion size you want.  Heavier weight cotton works better for the covers as the fabric will hold up better than the lighter weight quilting cottons, but if you have lots of cotton quilting scraps, you can certainly use these too!  Recycling jeans for this would work as well.

Projects were sewn (over time) on a Pfaff Sensation Pro II, a Pfaff 2144 and a Viking Diamond.