Yes, I am counting each individual drawstring/project bag as one finish…
So I finished 9 more drawstring/project bags recently as part of my A Year of Finishes – 2023 Project.
Five (5) rainbow fabric bags:
With either a coordinating floral or a yellow striped interior:
I also finished four (4) gray/copper knitting themed bags with gray flannel bottoms and trim:
I had this cool Moda fabric in my stash that I made the interior of the bags:
I am probably going to finish one more set of the drawstring/project bags and then stop. Recently an exciting opportunity for 2024 has come my way and I need to pivot on my priorities. More in a future post!
2023 is my year to make a dent in my outstanding projects (next post I will share the audit I did of my outstanding projects); and I’ve sort of made a dent in stack of drawstring/project bags to be completed (which I put on hold in November 2022 – see post That darn grief, the Etsy shop saga, and a little grace ).
Here is the pile of some of the unfinished bags:
I am still non weight bearing on my left leg after an ankle fracture and subsequent surgery to repair, I wanted to return to my sewing machine (enough with the hand sewing only!)
So John helped me get all set up at the sewing machine with everything within easy reach and I got to work!
I started with making bags that need purple thread as there is a thread and bobbin thread change for each set of project/drawstring bags.
I finished 9 drawstring/project bags (3rd to 11th finish of 2023!):
The bags had some fun linings:
Here are close up photos of the bags grouped by fabric:
Next I am switching to an orange thread to work on the next set of bags.
It felt good to be at my sewing machine again even if I had to take some frequent breaks.
Postscript
The other day a friend share photos of how she is using the drawstring/project bag she got from me last year – as a toiletry bag while traveling:
It was cool to see one of the bags I made in practical use!
I hope you all are having a wonderful holiday season and if you celebrate Christmas then I hope you had a very Merry Christmas. It is actually BEFORE Christmas right now and I am sitting in an airport waiting for my delayed flight and I thought” “what the heck, I will work on some future blog posts!”
If you’ve been following my blog you know I’ve been obsessed in the past with making project/drawstring bags (pattern by Sotak Handmade). Well I thought it would fun to make the small sized bags as gift bags for my family for Christmas.
I made a bag for each person based on their interests and what fabric I had on hand.
For example my brother and his family love the Marvel Avengers movies. They’ve seen all of them (they go as a family) and several of them have also read the comics. Surprisingly I had a little collection of Marvel Avengers fabric in my stash (not sure why but it was there) and here are the gift bags I made my brother, his wife and their son:
The lining of each bag is a different Marvel Avengers fabric.
Then for my sister’s family I made them gift bags based on their interests:
Here are all the gift bags together:
I just love these bags and I still have a whole box of project bags in various stages of assembly for when I am ready to return to making them to possible sell of my Etsy shop someday…
I am fascinated with the talent of the knitters whose blogs I follow. One of those is @Mildy Granola who is the queen of knitting socks. I think her entire family (hubby and adorable kids) only wear her hand knitted socks.
I’ve never owned a pair of hand knitted socks and I am Terrified (yes with a capital “T”) of knitting socks (even though I can knit a basic hat so I know all about double pointed needles).
So when Sarah @mildygranola offered to make me a pair of hand knitted socks in exchange for one of my drawstring/project bag, I quickly said YES!
Here are the amazing socks she made me:
And here is the drawstring/project bag I made her with the fabric she requested:
Sarah was not particularly focused on the fact that the outside bag fabric was Tula Pink fabric, she just liked the raccoon fabric, so I did not use Tula Pink fabric for the inside bag. Instead I found this lovely floral fabric that coordinated better in my opinion.
Sarah of course has already received her bag and it is already featured in photo in her latest post: Quick Trip
I think I made out better than she did with my first pair of hand knitted socks!
I continue with making project/drawstring bags (little obsessed) for my imaginary reopening of my tierneycreates Etsy shop. While making the latest group, I thought I would try something: making them “mass production” style. Okay well small scale mass production style. I would cut all the pieces out, fuse the interfacing, and sew them production style one step at a time.
The first three bags to come out of this experiment was three bags in different sizes (small, medium, large) made from Figo Fabric’s Harmony line, with the word “Harmony” from the selvage stitched onto the bags.
I decided to name this series of three bags – “Three Part Harmony”. Get it? Or perhaps the name is silly but it made me smile. I will sell them as a set on my Etsy shop.
I didn’t have enough of the word “Harmony” in the rest of the fabric’s selvage to continue to stitch it onto the rest of the bags, but I finished them up also “production style”. Here are the rest of the bags in progress:
What I learned from my “mass production” experiment:
HATED IT!
And if you’ve ever seen the comedy TV show In Living Color you can hear the inflection in my voice in your mind, ha!
Something about the magic of completing a bag got taken away when I was doing each step production line style on 7 bags.
I guess I just enjoy making one bag at a time and being in the process of completing one bag. I would be very poor if I tried to live off the proceeds of selling on Etsy – ha!
But this is to be a hobby not the way I make a living. Unless I could sell each bag for $1000….ha!
Postscript
My friend Judy (the one who got me in to quilting in the late 1990s) and her husband came for a long weekend visit this past weekend. We did a little Denver area “quilt shop hopping” during her visit and stopped at Treelotta Fabricswhich I discovered during the Rocky Mountain Quilt Shop Hop. While at this shop we discovered a different take on the drawstring bag that we really liked:
Instead of ribbon or cord, they made the drawstring from the same fabric as the bottom of the bag. Also they added some rick-rack to the seam between the two coordinating fabrics – very creative!
This gives me future ideas for bags. Of course I do need to make other things for my Etsy shop besides bags! (I do actually have a stash of other things I’ve made that I will share in future posts).
I missed making drawstring bags like I did during the retreat I attended in August (A Drawstring-bagalicious Retreat, Part I), so over the past couple of days I’ve been making more bags.
I have a fantasy still that I am going to reopen my tierneycreates Etsy shop and I am making stuff for my shop (shhhh don’t mention I’ve said many times in the past I was going to reopen that shop…but this time I might really do it…maybe…)
Here are the bags I’ve made so far and I have 6 more cut out to sew.
Repurposing Words/Label from the Fabric Selvage
A Little Butterfly Bag
Black and White Bag with a Pop of Color Inside
Since finishing that art quilt for the exhibit I mentioned in the post Secret Quilt and Design Wall Struggle, I am enjoying just making drawstring bags. Thank goodness I have a large stash of interfacing as these bags use a lot of interfacing to make them stand up. I
I am sure I will tire of making them eventually and move on to other stuff but right now I am enjoying playing with fabric combinations.
tierneycreates 