Looking for a last minute holiday project?
These Reusable Gift Bags are super easy to sew, look awesome and bonus, they are reusable! You will want to keep these after they open their present! The prints that I used for these bags are from Riley Blake Designs Christmas Traditions which can still be purchased on our site!
Sew, I recently purchased a serger several years after my husband "gifted" me one for Christmas (I use the quotes as Mr. SC knows better than to simply buy me a machine, he knows that I like to do a ton of research first to get the right one!) and I am looking for all of the projects that I could use this new machine for!
These gift bags were the first thing I tackled on the serger after learning to thread and making sure my settings were the way I wanted them! For those who are thinking about taking the serger plunge, check out the group on Facebook: Serging for an Answer: Serger Support Group, this group is AMAZING for helping people get set up and offering general advice!
Now, you don't need a serger to make these bags, but it sure speeds up the process! After looking over a number of free patterns, I settled on one posted on The Daily Sew with a few very small modifications. Check out the original post here! I will be noting my modifications, but you will need to be familiar with the pattern for it to make complete sense.
When I make product for the handmade business, I need to optimize the process for production sewing. Time is money, after all, which is generally the limiting factor when it comes to pricing handmade products at a fair wage for the artisan.
To save time, I serged the edges of my drawstring casing instead of ironing the double fold. I still folded the serged end over and again to get the double fold, but this saved lots of time painstakingly measuring out a half inch on all of those tiny pieces. I chain sewed the serging of the edges (I don't stop after each piece, cut threads and start again) and didn't worry about securing the thread ends as they will be caught in another seam.
Before folding the serged edges over to make the edge fold, I pressed the pieces in half (easier to press neatly before folding the ends), unfolded the pieces and then stitched the edge down.
When it came time to serge the casing to the main piece, I found that the first edges of the casing would shift a little even when pinned, which just wouldn't do for my quality standards, so I added a step to baste the casing to the main body piece with my regular sewing machine, again, chain piecing to save on thread and time.
It's so satisfying after a long run of straight stitching as well!
The rest of the steps are as described in the linked pattern! These bags take about 15-20 minutes to complete and are easy to batch together to make a bunch!
Bonus: If you make some reusable gift bags with Spack Craft Fabric products before the end of the year, you are eligible to enter our Holiday Contest! Check out the blog post here for more info!
Happy Sewing!