Finally, I have my sewing area back. We were temporarily using my sewing table as a TV stand but we moved it today and I am all ready to go!
Today I was making my lunch for work tomorrow, and I thought to myself, jeez, I use a TON of ziploc bags! Today I think the count was 7. What a waste! Then we went to Easter dinner and my sister in law happened to have a reusable snack bag with her. Brilliant! I had seen patterns but I needed a really easy one since PUL is a PITA. I used
this tutorial from We Wilsons. It could not have been easier!
I decided to make 4 baggies just to see if I like them. I made them full sandwich bag size. This was purely because I have no snack sized bags to use as a template. I cut my scrap fabric with the rotary cutter. The three in the front are cotton fabric, the animal print behind them is a printed PUL, and the white under that is 3 sheets of plain PUL.
I cut the velcro, but not according to the tutorial. I kind of winged that part. I have really wide velcro so I cut each piece in half lengthwise.
I ironed my very sloppy looking fabric. The printed PUL was a bit wrinkled as well, so I ironed that very carefully on low.
I started by making a baggie with the printed PUL. I figured this was my easiest bet since there would be less steps. I sewed the velcro to each end, going across each piece 4 times. It isn't exceedingly neat, but I am not going for neat here, just for utility.
Then, I got to the point where you turn it inside out to sew the sides together. I remembered what a PAIN IN THE ASS PUL is to sew!! Then I remembered a tip a sewing colleague of mine told me. She said whenever you have something fluffy, slippery, or difficult to hold still, just put a piece of paper on it and sew through that. It will rip right off just fine after you sew it together. Well, looking through the supplies from my mom I notice I have something that seems as if it was made for this purpose (on the left). It is a fibery paper material that you can pretty much see through, and it rips off the stitch really quick.
My finished monkey bag! I did do the topstitch around the edges to make it neater.
Then I started #2, in Apples and Pears, with the plain PUL liner. I used the same paper trick. This one was a tiny bit more work, but not much.
The finished inside, before turning out.
Topstitched finished product! Not perfect (as you can see the seams on the outside are uneven), but I like it!
A view from the inside!
All in all, two bags, including the cutting for 4 and all, took about 30 minutes to make. I think the other two will go much faster.
I am going to try my hand at snack sized bags next. I have a lot of scrap and a TON of PUL so this should be fun!
These were meant to be the same size. Fail. Usable fail. I also screwed up the velcro on the red one pretty badly.
I had a long narrow scrap of my patterned PUL so I winged this one into a little snack pouch.
I like the way this one turned out!
This is a full sized bag. I had to be extremely careful with this because of the pattern. The others were more forgiving, this one is straight lines.
Almost finished product. The lines actually line up pretty well on each side and side to side.
My work from today. Outside of the green starred one, I think they all turned out well!
