Reusable Baggies

Keeping with the idea of only filling Grant's stocking with things he needs or will be reused many times,  I decided to make him some reusable baggies.  I have seen these all over blog land for years and they have been on my never ending to-do list for just as long.  I didn't read a tutorial before making them, which is probably why I messed the first one up, oh well, story of my life, haha.

You will need the fabric of your choice, velcro, and I used a table cloth I found on clearence at the end of summer for $1.50 but I have also seen people use shower curtain liners or the waterproof fabric you can buy.  You could also use a zipper instead of velcro, I find velcro to be cheaper and easier for me to work with.

 

I made a pattern using a store bought baggie and newspaper.  I just traced the baggie onto the newspaper and cut it out.  I placed this on the fold of my fabric and cut my fabric to the correct size.

I love things to be personalized so I knew if I was going to make something so practical as part of a Christmas gift I needed to jazz it up a bit.  I used a water soluble quilting pen and traced Grant's name onto the fabric.  I made the stencil using my cricut and some cardstock (I do so love my Cricut!).  Then I just hand embroidered it.

I wanted Grant's name to be towards the bottom of the baggie, which is why I embroidered it more towards the middle of the fabric.  Where you want the person's name to end up will determine where you should trace it.

Here are 2 before I started sewing them.

Pin the outter fabric to your table cloth and cut out what will be your liner.

You are going to place 1 side of your velcro on the top end and the other on the bottom end (I call it the fluffy and rough side of the velcro).Both fluffy and rough parts should be placed on the right side of the table cloth since this is the side that will be the inside of your bag. 

The amount of velcro you will need depends on how wide your baggie is.  I didn't do much measuring (cuz I'm just like that), but if you are doing 1/4inch seem allowance you will need to place your velcro approximately 1/2 inch from either side and a 1/2inch from the top.  Pin your velcro down and stitch all the way around.  Make sure you backstitch a few times since this will get used and abused, haha.

Once both parts are sewn, it should look like this:

Pin your liner and outter fabric right sides together and stitch all the way around leaving a 2 inch opening for turning.  After stitching turn right side out.

Now I have 2 ways to show you how to do this.  Why did I do it 2 different ways on 2 different baggies you ask?  Because when you don't read a tutorial before starting a project, finish the project, and then realize you probably should have done it a different way, you end up changing  it the next time you sew one.

That being said, on my first baggie I did the following:

Once turning your baggie right side out, stick the velro ends together and pin around both left and right sides.

Stitch around three sides leaving the velcro top unstitched since this is how you will open the bag.

Your done! 

Now I'll show you how I did it the 2nd time around.  I liked the 1st way and there is nothing wrong with it, all comes down to preference.  As you can see in the above pic I didn't pay attention to what color of thread I used, thinking it didn't matter because no one would see it anyways.  Retard moment occured when I sewed around the 3 sides and realized, duh, you can see the unmatching thread.  Maybe I would have liked it better had the thread been a little less noticable in a white or orange. 

Anyways, still not switching out my thread (I rarely match my thread to my fabric since normally you can't see it), I decided to  make my 2nd baggie a bit different, here you go...

Starting back at the point where you had stitched both outter and liner fabric together leaving an opening and turned your baggie right side out.

Now fold your baggie in half with the liner side facing out, and pin the right and left sides.

Stitch around 3 sides making sure not to stitch your top velcro opening closed.

Clip the bottom 2 corners.

Turn right side out.

Here is the inside, ready for little treats.

We plan on filling Grant's with treats like Teddy Grahams, chocolate chip cookies, and other goodies before putting them in his stocking.  When I was little my mom always had all kinds of treats in our stockings and since Grant is still too young for loads of candy, I thought this was a perfect idea.

So now I have one little gift done, only a dozen or more to go haha.