Thanks to Lazy Gal Tonya, I have a new style of gift bag to make. These envelope style bags are easy to make with this tutorial. There is some hand sewing involved, more if you decide to hand quilt them.
I hand quilted the snowflakes on the white one with metallic DMC embroidery floss and it was a real bear! The floss kept separating and getting caught on itself. I'll stick to regular floss or perle cotton next time. I machine quilted the little one and I have a few more in the works that may be machine quilted due to a lack of time more than anything else. You really ought to go and see the ones Tonya's made though, here, here, here and here. That last link also has some of her cool gift tags. Tonya's bags are always so inventive (as is all her quilting) and she always hand quilts them.
The chickadee one is funny because this was the first one I made with that fabric and I was so proud that I cut it correctly to make the chickadees upright on the outside of the bag. Well, I was totally wrong and they were upside down. The great thing with these bags is I could just make that fabric be the lining and then they were upright. I've got two more coming with the chickadees on the outside because I finally figured out how to do it right. I've got a lot of that chickadee fabric. It's also on the back of the Christmas quilt at the bottom of this post.
One feature of these bags I like is the hand sewn side seams. This is done with perle cotton in a simple whipstitch. I sewed together the sides of the lining fabric so that you get a nice red line up the side. I have made other gift bags in the past and they are still being used. I do need to have more, so I've got these and may try to make my simple drawstring bags as well. I also came up with a little twist on these bags and will show you that tomorrow!
Recent Comments