Make it Monday: Burlap Bag

This week's Make it Monday is a little bit different. I spent this weekend racing sailboats so I didn't have time to do my own project but, I did teach my roommate to sew a burlap bag last week as packaging for a design project she did for school. I will give you a brief tutorial of how we made the bag and the details on some techniques we used tomorrow for "Technique Tuesday".

These are the steps that we used to make a bag out of burlap but you could use any other sort of fabric:

1. Measure and cut a rectangle of fabric as wide as you want the bag to be plus 1" for a 1/2" seam allowance on each side and as tall as you want plus 3-4" for the drawstring casing.

2. Fold in half and pin the long sides together.

3. Sew up the sides 1/2" from the edges.

4. To make the bottom square, keep the bag inside out and fill it with something to give it shape. Stand the bag upright and flatten out the bottom so that there two triangles poking out each side. Measure how far in you want the sides of the bottom, mark, sew and cut.

5. Keeping the bag inside out, fold over the top to make a casing as wide as you need it and sew around with a 1/2" seam allowance.

The bag before printing.

6.  To make a hole for the drawstring you can just work a hole into the threads of the burlap. If you cut any of the threads the fabric will unravel. If you are using another fabric you can make a button hole.

Keep an eye out tomorrow for how we printed it with the logo Courtney designed.

Stay crafty,