Drawstring Tote Bag Instructions

This drawstring tote bag is now my go-to gift bag. No need for a bunch of wasteful tissue paper to hide your present -- the drawstring closure keeps your surprise under wraps :)

The bag also becomes an extra bonus on top of the gift it's carrying inside. The first friend I gave one to years ago has been using it as her lunch bag. My sister-in-law intends to use hers to carry her art supplies.  It's just a conveniently sized little bag to carry stuff around in, with a simple closure so your things don't fall out.  What else could you ask for? :)

Although I first made this a few years ago and have made a few more since -- there are a couple of spots where I tend to mess up the construction (and then end up having to unpick a lot of stitches as a result).  So I figured it was time to put together instructions to prevent such future kerfuffles.

Here's what you need:

1 piece for the body - 21" x 14"
2 pieces for the handles - 3" x 14"
1 piece for the casing / drawstring closure - 8" x 21"
1 drawstring - at least 23" long (not in picture)

1. First we make the handles and body like you would with any other tote bag.

First, fold the handle pieces the long way, right sides facing and stitch the long sides together with a 1/4" seam allowance (so you have a long skinny tube).  Press the seam open and turn it right side out (attach a large safety pin onto the end of the tube and then push that safety pin through the inside of the tube to turn the tube right side out).

Press the handles with the seam in the middle.  Stitch along the length of the handles with 1/8" seam allowance (or as close to the edge as you can stitch nicely).

For the body piece, zigzag 3 out of the 4 edges, leaving one long edge raw.  This will be the top / opening of the bag.  Fold the piece in half, and stitch around the side and bottom of the bag with a 3/8" seam allowance, leaving the raw edge on top open.

(Optional) Square off the bottom corners of the bag, snip off the corners and zigzag the raw edge.

2.  Now we make the casing / closure for the drawstring tote bag.

Fold the casing/closure piece in half the long way and press.

Open it and fold it in half the other way and pin together.  Using pins, mark a point 1/2" from each side of the fold you made in the previous step (this is assuming that your drawstring is less than 1/2" wide -- if it's wider, you would mark those points the width of your drawstring away from the centre fold you made earlier).  Stitch this left side of the casing, from the bottom towards the middle, stopping at the mark you made and then back stitching.  Repeat from the top to wards the middle.

You now have a tube with the same diameter as the bag opening.

Press the seam open and stitch around the opening you have in the middle.  This is the opening for the drawstring casing.

Fold the tube in half along the crease you made at the beginning.  Stitch around the tube 5/8" from the fold.

3.  Now that we have the bag, handles and casing / closure piece, it's time to put them all together.

With the bag body right side out, pin the handles to the top of the bag 2 1/4" from the sides, with the seam facing away from the bag.  Put the casing over top of the body and handles and pin the raw edge of the casing to the opening of the bag.  Stitch with 3/8" seam allowance.

Turn the bag inside out and press the seam open so that the casing piece is flat.  Fold the whole top of the bag down so that 1 1/4" of the right side of the body fabric is showing.  Fold the handles up and pin.  Stitch around the opening of the bag, 1/8" from the top as well as 1/8" from the seam between the bag body and drawstring closure.

Turn the bag right side out, insert your drawstring and you're done!

Cooling pad covers

After a couple of days of draping these cooling pads around our necks to beat the heat, I realized that I'm going to need to wash these at some point. Putting the flax seed-filled heating/cooling pads in the washing machine didn't seem like a good idea. We needed covers.

Cooling pad

It's actually the same thing as the heating pad, but with the heat we've been experiencing lately, a cooling pad seemed like a more appropriate project.

Heating pad from shirt collar

Here's another super simple project: making a heating pad/neck warmer from a recycled shirt collar.

All you need is the collar from a shirt... (here's what Aysha did with other parts of this shirt)

...and some flax seed.

Sewing machine cover from recycled pillowcase

This is something I made a while back. I just needed something to put over my sewing machine so it wouldn't get so dusty while it was out of its case.

Laundry bag from recycled pillow case

Here's another simple project: a travel-sized laundry bag made from an old pillowcase and a long strip of fabric for the drawstring. 

Simple recycled pillowcase tote bag

Yesterday, I decided that I need some smaller bags bags to store my fabrics in.  I had made a giant bag a few months ago by stitching two pillowcases together but once that bag was filled with fabric, it became really awkward and heavy to carry.  So, I made a bag out of one pillowcase.  I just used the hem of the original pillowcase to make straps and then attached these straps to the remaining pillowcase.

Here's how to do it:

Drawstring bags from recycled handkerchiefs

Here's a super simple project.  Take one, two, or three handkerchiefs, some string (I used a lanyard from a plastic name tag holder) and make drawstring bags.  There are no seams to finish, no fabric to cut -- I didn't even do any pinning!  The whole thing just took a few minutes.
 

Book Pouch

Have you ever carried a book in your bag and then over the course of your day, had some soy sauce leak out of your lunch and get onto the book?

No? Is it just me?

Anyways, since this happened to me many years ago, I've tried to carry my books, especially my Qur'an, in some sort of little pouch to protect it from things like soy sauce or whatever else is in my bag that could cause it harm.

For the longest time (>10 years!) that little pouch was a thick plastic ziplock bag, which I got from Canadian Blood Services after my first blood donation. Alas, 10 years is a long time and at the end of its days, the plastic in that ziplock bag started to get brittle and little pieces would fall off when I opened the bag. I finally had to retire it.

So, I had to make a new pouch. I used up more of that gingham and used the simple pouch pattern that I've used before to make a cutlery holder and change purse.

The bag opens like one of those old sandwich bags with the fold on the top.

You just put your book in and you're good to go!

Sewing Kit from Business Cards

My job title at work recently changed so now I have a whole new stack of 500 business cards while I've hardly made a dent on my old stack. In trying to think of ways to make use of these cards, here are a few things that I came up with...

A little envelope for a threader




A matchbook for keeping pins

A larger sewing kit that holds more pins

To make the slit, punch two holes with a hole puncher and use scissors to cut out a long strip from one hole to the other. When it's all assembled, the card that holds the pins can also taped down to make a pocket to store other essentials.

Cutlery holder/pouch tutorial

I made this cutlery holder to go with the lunch bag. The idea is that if I had to use some cutlery and couldn't wash it, I could put it in this little pouch so that it wouldn't get the rest of the bag dirty. I could then throw the pouch in the laundry and use another one (I've got three of these now).

So, here's how to make it: