Christmas Shopping Bags
I think I'll try and post some pictures from Christmas, before they become completely irrelevant...
I made shopping bags to put everyone's presents in (except my husband's because I do most of the shopping so it would be like giving the bag to myself), out of fair trade cotton calico and leftover scraps of fabric I had. Since it's fair trade, and not on special, it's rather expensive, and with the cost of labour these shopping bags would cost about $50, as compared to $2 like they do when you get them from the supermarket. Of course, mine are a bit fancier than the $2 ones, but still...
However, it was lovely lovely material, it felt very nice and it was really nice to sew. The weird thing is that cutting it felt a bit like cutting some silk I had- like the feeling through the scissors was similar in the way it sliced through it. Very odd. For those that like cutting fabric, you could cut this all day; it was lovely.
So I did some of it batch-wise, and some of it individually. I made up all the straps, and all the pockets first, then put each bag together. Here are the pockets, made of smaller leftover pieces. Doing all the stitching in white was a design decision. Also, it would have been really annoying changing threads for each, and really I think it looks ok.
This is the inside of one bag - the seams are enclosed by having an uneven seam allowance and after sewing the seam, wrapping the wider piece around the other seam allowance, folding it under and sewing it down. Two of the bags were done like this, 2 had french seams, and I think the other one was just annoying so I just zig-zagged the edges.
You can almost, but not really, see that I did fancy little corner reinforcements on the pocket top corner.
The most fun ("funnest") bit was reinforcing the handles. It was surprisingly easy to make nice little even crosses just by eye (except for the time I forgot I'd moved the needle over and everyone of the crosses on one bag came out wrong and it was mystifying why it wasn't working - like if you were trying to do something with your right hand but your left hand was moving instead and you couldn't work out what was wrong; something like that), and very satisfying once done. Isn't it pretty?
And here are the 5 bags, hanging on the door. The first two use fabric from jeans on the side, the third and last ones have other fabric on the sides, the fourth just has fabric added to the front. The curved bottom ones (3rd and 4th) were easiest to sew because I could do a continuous french seam around the bottom, thus enclosing and reinforcing the seam efficiently and easily. Dad got one of the square ones on the end and is reportedly actually using it for shopping, yay!
I made shopping bags to put everyone's presents in (except my husband's because I do most of the shopping so it would be like giving the bag to myself), out of fair trade cotton calico and leftover scraps of fabric I had. Since it's fair trade, and not on special, it's rather expensive, and with the cost of labour these shopping bags would cost about $50, as compared to $2 like they do when you get them from the supermarket. Of course, mine are a bit fancier than the $2 ones, but still...
However, it was lovely lovely material, it felt very nice and it was really nice to sew. The weird thing is that cutting it felt a bit like cutting some silk I had- like the feeling through the scissors was similar in the way it sliced through it. Very odd. For those that like cutting fabric, you could cut this all day; it was lovely.
So I did some of it batch-wise, and some of it individually. I made up all the straps, and all the pockets first, then put each bag together. Here are the pockets, made of smaller leftover pieces. Doing all the stitching in white was a design decision. Also, it would have been really annoying changing threads for each, and really I think it looks ok.
This is the inside of one bag - the seams are enclosed by having an uneven seam allowance and after sewing the seam, wrapping the wider piece around the other seam allowance, folding it under and sewing it down. Two of the bags were done like this, 2 had french seams, and I think the other one was just annoying so I just zig-zagged the edges.
You can almost, but not really, see that I did fancy little corner reinforcements on the pocket top corner.
The most fun ("funnest") bit was reinforcing the handles. It was surprisingly easy to make nice little even crosses just by eye (except for the time I forgot I'd moved the needle over and everyone of the crosses on one bag came out wrong and it was mystifying why it wasn't working - like if you were trying to do something with your right hand but your left hand was moving instead and you couldn't work out what was wrong; something like that), and very satisfying once done. Isn't it pretty?
And here are the 5 bags, hanging on the door. The first two use fabric from jeans on the side, the third and last ones have other fabric on the sides, the fourth just has fabric added to the front. The curved bottom ones (3rd and 4th) were easiest to sew because I could do a continuous french seam around the bottom, thus enclosing and reinforcing the seam efficiently and easily. Dad got one of the square ones on the end and is reportedly actually using it for shopping, yay!
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