 Hey guys, a little mini tutorial, so project bags. I've found over the years that whether I am knitting, crocheting, mixed media watercolor, I just, when I am out and about, whether it's on a day road trip or I'm actually traveling out of state, out of the country, I like to take supplies with me. We all do, right? At the same time, I don't like to take a lot. Now, if I'm gonna primarily be drawing, I have a mini art therapy journaling bag that I take, especially from flying, because it has like DIY coloring book in it that helps me stay calm. I don't like to fly. And I'll link the video for that down below. But for the most part, just a really simple bag works for me because I can use it for a crochet project. I can dump a journal and some pens and pencils maybe some watercolor paints in it, a glue stick. And I just have everything contained in one bag and said bag can go in my backpack that is either in the car with me or on the plane with me in the seat in front of me, under the seat in front of me. And this is the first one that I made. I used to use pencil pouches, but they were never quite big enough. And we went on a road trip recently and I wanted to take some needlework with me. I've been doing some crochet. So I really quickly came upstairs, grabbed some thrifted fabric, which is this, an old curtain valance. And a zipper, I have a stash of zippers. I used to do a lot of dress making, which I don't, I do some for myself, but I don't really anymore. Anyway, I've got this giant wad of zippers. So grabbed a zipper and it's not lined. It's just a simple bag. I did surge all the edges and it's big enough to hold a couple of balls of yarn. So I'm working on socks. Pattern notes, stitch markers, because I'm working on socks. My crochet hook, which has some stains on it, which I have to try to get off. If you have any tips, let me know from the yarn and my tool, little tool case. And it's just big enough, but it's also, this is half of it, eight and a half by 11 sheet of paper. So it's, and that's usually the size journal I work in or sketchbook. And so it's plenty big enough to hold that. And I can fit more than the balls of yarn I have in here, in here, if I needed to. And it works really well. It works so well, I made a couple more of them. Now I really love the idea of, you know, sometimes when you go shopping, especially when you're traveling, if you spend, you know, a significant amount, they will give you everything in, instead of a paper or plastic bag, a canvas bag. And usually it'll have like the store logo or something on it. And I had a couple of those and one that my daughter got from me, one that I got from a local yarn shop. And I turned them into project bags. And I love that. I also have one that's actually that oversized pencil case that I bought in Hawaii. And they work really well. But I thought, you know, I really like the idea of having just, you know, we're going on a day trip. Let's see, I'm gonna take this bag because it's got my socks in it. I'm gonna take that bag because it's got my coloring book in it. And I like that. And I like bags anyway. So I am gonna be selling a few of them in my Etsy shop. And so you can find the link for that down below. I recently went thrifting with the daughter and I found some tea towels and some placemats. And I'm gonna turn them all into bags today. Now, they won't necessarily all be for sale because I am gonna keep some for myself. But some of them will be. So you'll have to check the Etsy listing to see which ones are. And if you have a placemat, I found these Mamakuko placemats, probably Japanese. And it's double-sided fabric. So I'm going to cut it, actually cut it apart now. It is a decent-sized placemat. So I probably could just fold it in half and make a bag. But again, I really like a larger bag. So I'm gonna cut the seam off and then we're gonna make a bag out of that. I also found a bunch of tea towels. And these are gonna just again, just get folded in half. So they'll be a really nice, big, but not too big size. And I'm gonna show you how I do this. The first thing I'm gonna do is cut this one in half. And then the next thing to do is finish all the edges. Now on all of these, I have a big stack of tea towels. On the tea towels, I don't need to do that, they're hemmed. We're gonna just leave them. On this one, I'm cutting apart. We'll have to do something to the edges. So we're gonna surge the edges. I have a serger. If you don't have one, then you're gonna wanna zigzag the edges or something, these are not lined. But you're gonna probably use it a lot if you're like me. So you're gonna wanna do something to finish all the edges of each individual piece of fabric before you do anything else. So let me cut this one apart. Let me surge the edges on the ones I've got a serge and I'll be right back. Okay, I got the fabric that needs serging surged. So when I did this bag, I didn't do anything fancy to the ends of the zipper. And so they're a little bit bunchy like this, which isn't the best. I didn't care at the time. I just needed a bag really quick. But in this tutorial, I'm gonna show you how to get a nice finish on the zipper and hint it's the same thing I did down here. So anyway, the first thing I'm gonna do is attach zippers to all my bag fabrics. So I'm going to gather all my fabrics and the associated zippers and I'm gonna attach them to the top of the fabric. Now, if you're going to not care and you don't care if it's gonna be bunchy in the corners, then have your zipper run nearly to the edge of the fabric. If you want it to be fancier at the top, sew a little piece of fabric to the end of your zipper this way. Sew it over here and then flip it back this way. And then sew your zipper in, which I did on some bags, but if you want a tutorial on that, I guess I could do it, but anyway, you probably can Google it. So what I'm gonna do is, my zippers are all different lengths too. And most of them are some kind of plastic. So I'm gonna cut them to size. I will take a lighter and melt the edges so things don't unravel on the zipper. But I'm gonna cut them to size for each individual piece of fabric. And then I'm going to sew them down, actually. Sorry. Right sides together. I'm gonna sew it down here and then flip this up and then do the other side. And so then the zipper will be in and we just need to assemble the bag. So I'm gonna do that with all of them. I'll be right back. Doing the tea towels and we do the completed bag assembly. I put the zipper in. I've left all the hemmed edges because then I don't have to search anything. Work smarter, not harder, right? And also we are just folding the tea towel in half right sides together so we don't have to do a bottom hem or seam. So we're just gonna do the sides. But first, again, we're gonna get all the zippers in. All right, I'll be back. Okay, the stack is done. Now what I'm gonna do is I'm going to seal. He'd seal the end of the zippers, any of the ones that I cut. Now, if you're gonna do this, do it with all caution. Have a glass of water next to you. You know, I really, I hold it back like this and do it. And then, you know, so be careful. You don't have to do this. You could just zigzag, do a bunch of zigzag, which is safer. So anyway, I'm gonna do that. And then we are gonna sew up the sides. Now we're gonna sew the side seams. If you have one like this, that's two pieces of fabric, then you need to sew down one side across the bottom and up the other side. When you do the side seams, push your zipper tape up like this and sew it down on both sides. So push it up and then sew it down. Now on the tea towels, we don't have to sew the bottom. We're gonna do the sides the exact same way, but we're just gonna do only the sides. All right, let's do it. Before you sew the last side, make sure to open the zipper a little bit. Otherwise, you're never gonna be able to turn it right side out. Oops. On the, it's over there. On the bags that I've made, I like to have the bottom of it be a little bit flat. You don't have to do this part. You could just be one and done at this point and turn it right side out and you've got a project bag, but I like to add a little bit of a flat spot. So I take the side seam and the bottom and I open them up and try to match them up as best I can till you form a triangle. And I'm gonna just put a clip. And then I have this point at about, I have inch marks on my machine and I have it at about the three, which is about probably inch and a quarter from the needle, inch and a half. And then I'm gonna sew a straight line across on both sides of the bottom. But what I'm also gonna do is do it on the top by the zipper. This is gonna be a little bit more bulky, but hold on. So when you do the bottom, you'll end up with a nice flat edge like that. Now, instead of having your top end up like this, you could put a piece of fabric at the end of the zipper and then sew it and it would be flatter, but you could do this other part. Now this one's very sloppy because I just did it really quick and I didn't flatten the fabric out very well, but I think if you do it this way, it's gonna turn out like that. So let's try it. So when you turn it right side out, the top of your bag looks like that. Nice, flat. Yep, all right, let's do them all. Once you get it done, trim all the threads, turn it right side out, push out all the corners, and you have a project bag, a nice project bag, nice neat corners, nice edges, washable with a decent-sized zipper so you can get your stuff in and out of the bag easily. Cool, huh? All right, so I'm going to finish the rest of the bags and I'll be back in a minute. Okay, in general, the bags measure about 15 by 12-ish. The tea towels are ones that are folded in half. The place mat ones, hang on, let's see. They are just under 15, like 14 and three quarters by about 10 and a half, whereas these are like 15 and a half by 12, by 12, about 12. So anyway, I'm gonna be pulling out a few and keeping them, but I will be selling the excess. I love bags, but I don't need this many, but I do love a good project bag. Very useful, and if you, or somebody you know, doesn't do arts and crafts, my daughter uses something similar for a mini diaper bag. So she's going out with Junior and they're just doing a quick trip to the grocery store or something. She has a bag like that. She can throw a couple of diapers in, a small pack of wipes, an extra binky, and a bottle or a package of teething cookies or something. And she's good to go for the most part for a quick trip. And that works really well for her. And she can fit that in her purse. And she doesn't have to carry the big giant diaper bag. So they're so very useful. And I love them. And I love having different projects in different bags. So that could just be me, but yeah. Anyway, I hope it gives you some ideas of what you can do. Use thrifted and found materials, things maybe you have laying around the house. I haven't even bought the zippers because I had them. And zippers are one of the things when I'm out thrifting, especially if I'm at some place like Value Village or Savers or Goodwill and they'll have the bags of sewing notions. If they have one of zippers, I'll just grab it. At least when I work this down a little bit more. Maybe not right now, because I still have a lot. All right, I don't buy them though unless I need a specific zipper for a specific thing. Otherwise I don't buy, I use what I have. That's why some of the zippers don't match. Like my grandmother's tea towel is blue and white. Well, faded blue and white. But the zippers pink, because I used what I had. So anyway, these are not perfect. I will do my best to cut off all the stray threads and everything, but I think that you guys would love them. They are cotton and they're washable. It's all washed and cleaned and ready to go. So yeah. Anyway, that's it for the minute. I hope it gives you some ideas of what you can do. Don't forget to like, share and subscribe. If you make any project bags, tag me in the post, I'd love to see what you do. And if you are interested in one of these bags before I even get them listed up on Etsy, either PM me over in Facebook or send me an email. And we'll work something out, because at this moment I have no idea what I'm gonna charge, so. So anyway, yeah, I think that's it for right now. Don't forget to go out and have a good day. Do something nice for yourself because you deserve it. Maybe make a project bag. I'll see you in the next video. Bye guys.