IMHO if you can position yourself in a relatively niche domain, you may actually get more value than by creating weekend projects.
In your shoes, I would actually try to get hired now. Probably lots of companies, see e.g. Who is hiring / Who wants to be hired threads, would extend you an offer straight away.
Sounds valid too. From OPs post it sounded like he's not very confident in his coding ability any more, so I suggested the weekend projects. But no downside to just applying already and finding out if your confidence/ability is already enough :) If not, can always do more weekend projects until it is.
