A drawstring bag is perfect for many things – be it organizing or giving a gift! And it is so easy to make why not use them where you can?
Total Project Time: 20 minutes
In the world of board games, drawstring bags are especially useful. They can help hide pieces and allow for random drawing. Or they can just be good storage – especially for those pieces that are too big to fit in a plastic bag. And that’s exactly what happened when we got the game Bites. The tiles pieces in bites are quite large and despite my best efforts, shoving them all into a plastic bag made a bulbous monstrosity. Not only did the pieces have a hard time but the bag did not sit very well in the box. Which meant only one thing; I had to come up with a solution.
Check out the Craft section of MCG for more fun patterns in forever fabrics or more unlimited ideas.
Supplies
For this project, we only need three things:
- Fabric (I used about 24 inches by 7 inches because my bag was large)
- Fabric Tape
- Ribbon
It’s important to make sure your ribbon fit’s in with the fabric you’re using. I also suggest having pinking shears and pins on hand. And, as always with my sewing projects, I will do my sewing on a machine.
Process
The end result is fairly simple and the process is too! First you want to make the general shape of your desire bag with it being twice in long in length (and then some) from your desired size. In order to do a minimal amount of sewing, we are going to fold over the fabric so the base is a softer and natural fold of the fabric.
I like to trim the edges of the sides after making my square because it helps me visualize the final product and helps me keep the lines straighter. I find it’s much easier to make a straight line when you have a straight line to follow in the first place.
Before going to make the pouch, I wanted to make the pocket for the drawstring (or ribbon) to go. To ensure the pocket has a nice edge – I cut a piece of the fabric to fold over on the length side. The edging here was held in place with fabric tape. The edging it then folded over and tucked to create pocket for the drawstring. This seam will be visible on the finished product so that’s something to keep in mind.
We want to do this process on both ends of the piece – this is where our draw string will come into play and we need both sides to make it work. Once we have all our parts aligned, it’s time to pin the fabric together and sew together the sides. I like using the pinking shears to finish the side edges because these edges will be touched often by the final contents of the bag.
Then it’s time to turn the bag right side out and add the draw string. I used a pretty large needle to pull the fabric through, but a safety pin will work just as well. The edges of my ribbon easily fray from being cut and the pinking shears did not really make the situation better. So I turned to fire. A quick blow torch allowed the ends to singe and prevents unraveling.
And then we have a full functional drawstring bag!
Lessons
Fabric Tape
How have I never known this was a thing??? Fabric tape allows fabric to be bonded together using just heat. This can allow for clean seams without having to sew. It can also help keep something in place while you sew the fabric to reinforce the joining!
Quick Recipe
Instructions
- Cut out fabric into a square shape with the width being a little bigger than desired and the length being twice the desire length.
- Cut the fabric slightly along the length side on each four corners of the fabric.
- Use fabric tape to fuse cut corners to be permanently folded over.
- Create a pocket for the ribbon along but width edges of the fabric by folding over the fabric, create and internal edge on each pocket.
- Sew the length edges of the fabric together to create the main pouch.
- Turn project right side out.
- Thread ribbon through the created pocket.