Many of you were curious about how to make these little cuties, so I decided it would be perfect for this session. These are directions for a sew-in type frame. If you have a glue-in frame, the same principals apply, only you will glue into your frame, rather than sew it in. These directions are more geared to constructing the body of the bag, so you should be able to apply the same principals to any size/type frame.
Note: If you are hesitant to cut into your favorite fabrics for your first project, start with some muslin or not-so-pretty fabrics to practice and achieve a pleasing size or shape.
Let's begin.
You'll need:
Paper (not shown)
Scissors
Embroidery Floss / Perle Cotton
Thread
Sewing Needle
Embroidery Needle
Straight Edge (for drawing lines)
Pencils
Fabric Scraps or Fat Eighths (for a smaller frame)
Scrap Batting** (For interfacing. You may use fusibles if you prefer)
Metal Sew-In Frame
** The weight of your interfacing really depends on the size of your frame slot. This little frame has a thinner slot, so I’ve only used cotton batting. If you have a larger frame/slot, your may want to beef it up. If you are using thicker fabric, you may want to thin it out. Play with it and use your best judgment. The goal is to fit inside the frame slot without a ton a wiggle room or gaps. If you achieve this perfect balance of fabric and interfacing, you won’t ever need to use cording or clamps/pliers to close the gap (as with other tutorials).
Today we’ll be making a shape like this. No gussets, just simple rounded corners for the bottom.
We want to made a 1/4” seam for our bag. To do this, you can use 2 pencils with a rubberband.
Trace around your frame. Fill in the gaps where the clasp is.
Make a mark where the frame ends, just above the hinge. This will be where you sew your “y-seam” at the hinge.
Find the center of your drawn frame. Use your frame width to create a trapezoid shape. I just eye-balled the top side curve and drew a straight line down about 5”(ish). You may determine how long you actually want your bag body to be.
** If you’d like a fuller bag, leave the top as marked and make the bottom of the trapezoid a little wider. Make sure your hinge mark is still in proportion to the top corner. I highly recommend that you don’t make a simple square shape. The bag body will become flat and it will be difficult to put your fingers inside to get stuff out. With a trapezoid shape you get a little more fullness, and you can easily make any type of roundness or gussets for the bottom.
If you want to be exact, you can actually measure. I didn’t, my eyeballs are great measuring tools. :-)
Cut out your new template. Fold it in half and trim to make it symmetrical.
Using your new template, trace and cut out the fabric pieces. You will need 2 pieces each for the Exterior, Interior, and Interfacing.
Transfer your hinge mark to all of the fabric pieces.
Let’s start sewing!
Start sewing your EXTERIOR. Grab your needle and thread (or machine). Place right-sides together. With a scant (less than) 1/4” seam, start stitching from the hinge mark, DOWNWARD to the bottom corner, across the bottom, and back up to the other hinge mark. Knot off.
Here’s a shot of the corner. When you get there, just pivot and keep going along the seam.
(bad shot).
Now we will do our lining. Place your interior fabric face down on a table. Place your interfacing onto the WRONG side of your fabric. Now pretend they are one solid piece of fabric, as if you were to fuse them together.
With right-sides of the fabric facing, repeat the same stitch line as used for the exterior. Only this time sew with an exact or just slightly over 1/4”.
**By using 2 different seam allowances, the interior and exterior won’t be fighting each other along the seams when place together. Hence, the interior will fit better into the exterior.
Now, we’ll make our rounded corner. This could’ve been done earlier with our template, but I wasn’t sure what shape I wanted until after I stitched everything. You may find you want a square gusset, or some other shape. That’s cool, too!
To make the rounded corner, find a small round object such as a shot glass, large spool, a little tin – anything with a curve that pleases you and in proportion to the angle.
Trace the shape at your corner, and re-stitch ON the line. Trim away the extra stuff.
We need to make sure our lining will fit.
Place the lining inside your exterior. If it fits, great. If not, trim down some of the seam allowance. That should do it. If not, you may need to re-stitch somewhere on the interior piece. No biggie.
Once you’ve determined that the interior fits, take it out of the exterior piece.
Place your EXTERIOR inside your interior, like this. Line up your raw top edges.
Now it’s time to sew the top edges. This is where we make the “Y-Seam”. It’s not hard, just a little tricky. YOU CAN DO THIS.
From the outside, place your needle in the FIRST stitch of BOTH the exterior and interior that you made for the bottom. Try not to catch the other side of the Y with your needle. You should have 3 layers to stitch through – the interfacing, the lining fabric, and the exterior fabric. If you have poked through more than 3 pieces, start over. You notice in the photo, my seam is making a Y-shape. My needle is going exactly through the center of the intersection.
Bring your needle back to the outside. Your first stitch is done, and that was the hardest part. You survived!
Continue stitching with a 1/4” seam, over to the other hinge.
Repeat for the other top-side, but this time leave an opening to turn it right-side-out. Knot it off really good here, so that your don’t rip your seam when turning it out.
Turn the bag right-side-out.
Turn in the seam 1/4” and stitch it closed. It doesn’t have to be perfect; you won’t see this part.
Finger press (or iron) the top seam. Place the top seams into the frame (as far as they’ll go) to make sure they fit all the way around. You don’t want to see any daylight through those tiny holes.
You should have no gap between the hinge and the Y-seam. If you’ve got some serious gap-osis going on, simply whipstitch the seam until it fits. I’ve done it. It happens and it’s no big deal.
To keep the fabric aligned in the frame while I sew it in, I use a little tape to hold everything together.
***If you are gluing your frame, place the tape on AFTER gluing, to keep it in place until the glue sets.
Grab your embroidery floss or perle cotton. I use all 6 strands so that the stitches are in proportion to the holes in the frame. If you were to use a thinner strand, you holes might be more noticeable.
Put a tiny knot at the end of your strand. Insert your needle from the interior, poke through the first hole to the exterior.
Weave in and out of the holes, like this. Finding the hole from the inside can be tricky. Just pretend your doing some embroidery; eventually the needle pops through in the right spot.
Here is what it looks like on the inside.
When you get to the last hole, don’t knot off; stitch back the other way, filling in the other stitches. Try your best to stick your needle back into the same stitch holes you’ve already created. This will help make it look a bunch cleaner on the inside when it’s finished.
When you get to the last hole, you will be on the exterior. Place your needle back through the metal hole, toward the inside. Knot it off and bury your strand in the fabric. Trim your tail from the first knot. Repeat these steps for the other side of the frame.
Your all done!
Wasn’t that easy? To make this bag, it took me about 2 and half hours (hand stitching/note taking/pictures). I’d imagine that without the pictures it would take about an hour and a half to 2 hours, depending on how fast a stitcher you are.
Now go make one for all your friends!
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