Stash Bustin' Gift Bags

In my experience with community theatre, it is tradition for cast members give each other little gifts as mementoes either on opening night or closing night (or sometimes any night of the run). Usually, it's little cards or candies or small trinkets. This year, there were four cast members in particular that I wanted to thank for lending me different items that helped me out a great deal. I figured that even if they didn't like them, they're only grocery bags–they can stash them in their car just in case their needed.

Since I had taken the week of the run off work to preserve my sanity and sleep habits, I had some time to whip up some personal thank-you's in the form of reusable grocery bags (they came in handy after the last show when everyone has a bunch of accumulated crap in the dressing room to bring home with them. 

I copied the pattern off a bag that I got as a promo item. It features a clever little design feature in the form of a corner drawstring pocket that the entire bag can be stuffed into and then cinched up (kind-of looks like a little strawberry to me). 

All fabric I had in my stash, I just had to purchase a couple of packages of seam binding for two of the bags as well as elastic and toggles for the drawstrings. 

The orange and purple snakeskin print was my first try and test bag–which I kept–mostly because of the slightly shoddy binding application, and the fact that it's my favourite fabric in my stash. I made a dress out of it a couple of years ago that wasn't completely successful so I'm happy to have it appear in my every day life now. 

I learned from my mock up that the main bag material must be light-weight. the corner piece can be a heavier fabric, and there's more than one way to apply the binding. In the end, by being careful, I could sew it on in one pass as opposed to sewing it on once, folding it and then stitching in the ditch. It saved a LOT of time.

To be honest, these bags didn't really put a huge dent in my stash, but it was fun to pair up fabrics and colours. 

It's a pretty straightforward pattern that I'm sure most could figure out, but if anyone is interested, I could try to figure out how to post it. Or at the very least write up a tutorial.