Spring Drawstring Bag

I made a drawstring bag yesterday.  My quilt guild is having a fabric challenge this year, and because of limited space at the venue we meet at, I was carrying the fat quarters back and forth from my home.  After 8 months, I was getting a little tired of doing this, so I thought why not store them in a bag which could be tied to the handle of the library cart?

This being a quilt guild, I needed to make a fabric bag. 

My sewing room is like a greenhouse now, filled with hyacinth, gerbera, primrose, and miniature roses.  So I was inspired to pull three fabrics that went together well, and which had a spring feel.

This was the first audition - light floral for the bag, dark floral for the casing, and yellow for the drawstring.

This was the second audition, and the one I went with.  I had 1 yard of the black tulip fabric and only 1/2 yard of the light, so this was more logical.  Plus I liked it better this way.

I didn't use a pattern,  For something this simple, it didn't seem necessary.   The fat quarters for the fabric challenge are kept in a tissue box, with a sign made out of mat board.  All I did was make sure that the dimensions of the bag were more than adequate to hold the fancy display.

The first I thing I noticed when draping the fabric around the box was that the tulips went "up" on one side, but "down" on the other.  So I cut the fabric into two long strips, approximately 18" x the width of fabric, then laid them right sides together, with the tulips in the same direction.

Then I stitched around all four sides, leaving a small opening to turn the fabric.  After turning it right side out, I now had the beginnings of a lined bag.  I pressed the open seam allowance to the inside, making a nice straight edge.  Then I folded the rectangle in half, meeting the short ends.  This created more of a square shape.  I sewed a narrow seam along the short edge and along the bottom.  Now I had a bag, and all the tulips faced up on all the sides.  Success!

(Sorry for all those words, but I was on a mission to make the bag and take the photographs all in one day, so the photographs got the short end of the stick.)

For the casing, I cut two pieces, 3" x 18".  Actually, I cut four of them.  Because the fabric was folded when I cut it, and the floral was so large, the top strip had different colors than the bottom strip.  I cut another set of two, then picked the two that looked the best against the bag.

I pressed under 1/4" on all four sides. 

Then I stitched the casing 1" from the top of the bag.  I had a little problem here.  It was so much fun sewing, that I sewed along this long edge, got to the bottom, turned the corner, sewed along the short edge, turned the corner again and started sewing down the other long edge.  Then my brain engaged and I asked myself how I was supposed to insert the drawstring if I just sewed the short edge to the bag.  Oh.

I ripped it out, and before sewing it back onto the bag, I did a few rows of stitching on the short ends of the casing to keep it from raveling (unraveling?) as the drawstring gets used.

For each of the two drawstrings, I sewed 2" strips of fabric together until they were two and a half times as long as the width of the bag.  I ironed each strip in half, then opened it up and pressed the raw edges to the center.   Then I folded it on the original fold line, pressed the ends to the inside, and stitched the edges closed.

Here's the finished bag, flat.

Here it is, carrying the tissue box, sign, and fat quarters.

And here it is, all closed up and ready to tie to the handle of the library cart for storage.