Gift Bag Tutorial

Supplies:

  • Fabric – I use either a half yard, a yard or a fat quarter. If you use a yard you can make 4 smallish bags, two medium bags or one large bag. You can make bags with any size piece of fabric and you can make a specially sized bag for a special gift.
  • thread
  • ribbon
  • Sewing machine
  • basic sewing kit

For this tutorial, we will use a fat quarter of fabric

1. If your fat quarter does not have a selvedge, create a hem using two folds so there are no raw edges. If your fat quarter has a selvedge, use the selvedge for the top. It won’t unravel.

2. Press hem in place.

3. Sew hem with a decorative stitch, if you have it, a zigzag or straight stitch work fine as well.

Optional: If you have stitch letters on your sewing machine, stitch your name and the year so you know when you made the bag.

4. Fold hemmed bag in half RIGHT SIDES TOGETHER so that half of the hem is underneath itself towards the top and the fold is on the left. You will be making a French seam.

5. Fold a piece of ribbon about 1.5 feet long in half. You can adjust the size of ribbon you use depending on how much ribbon you need to tie.

6. Place the folded ribbon in the open side of the bag about 4″ from the top edge/hem.

7. Pin ribbon in place.

8. Pin rest of the right side and bottom closed.

Use an 1/8″ seam allowance or as small as you can.

9. Starting from the top, sew down the right side, backstitching at the beginning and over the ribbon 2-3 times. You want to backstitch at stress points to keep the bag from ripping apart.

10. Turn at the corner and continue across the bottom, backstitching at the end.

11. Turn the bag inside out, so the right sides are together and the ribbon is out of the way of the seam (It will be inside the bag, but I put mine as straight as possible towards the opposite side of the bag.

12. Press seams, taking care to push them as far out as possible so there is no extra fabric near the seams.

Use a 1/2″ or 5/8″ seam allowance.

13. Starting at the top, sew down the side and across the bottom again to finish the seam.

14. Open bag to make sure the raw edge is hidden inside the seam.

15. Turn bag inside out and press.

Voila! Your bag is really to use!

Please come back and check this tutorial out as I may update it.

Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

4 thoughts on “Gift Bag Tutorial”

Comments are closed.