Wrapping It Up

 

My revamped craft room now features a new sewing table where my sewing machine is set below the table top giving me a flat bed sewing space.  It is fabulous!  The first project I made was this ditty bag for one of the Project 71 veterans but it’s ideal if you want to give presents in reusable bags.  They’re very adaptable: you can make them any size to suit just one present or to hold a few.  Use festive fabric and you’re sorted for Christmas too.

This bag was for a former member of the Royal Navy so I wanted it to be sea themed.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have any pieces of fabric large enough so I quilted a selection of squares, adding the recipient’s intials to one.  Don’t do this if your aim is for the bag to be reusable!

After the quilting was complete, I stitched the side seams together and then cut a square from the bottom corners to enable the bag to have a boxed base.

This is achieved by straightening out the cut sections, matching up the side and bottom seams and stitching straight across.

Next, I made a lining for the bag, leaving the bottom open for turning.  This will be stitched up at the end.

The bag and the lining were placed right rides together and stitched together around the top.  The bag was turned right side out by ‘bagging out’ – turning the whole thing through the hole in the lining.

Normally, I would just sew a channel for the pull threads but due to my quilting the outside, this wasn’t going to work so I a length of bias binding to each side to make the channels.

I used a safety pin as the guide to feed a length of ribbon through each of the channels and knotting at the side.  This process was repeated from the other side, giving two pull ties.

Finally, I stitched two tabs of the lining fabric to neaten the ends of the ribbon.  When each tab is pulled, the bag cinches tightly together.