Weeks 20 & 21 or More Shirt Bags

It's been a busy 2 weeks. We had a big birthday party last weekend, complete with homemade piñata and bean bag toss. Each of those took several hours of work. Not to mention the shopping, invitations, keeping track of everything and trying to talk the girls out of adding yet another complicated activity to the schedule. In the end, we did not have the multi-level jump pad set up, just a couple of little trampolines. Which the guests didn't seem to mind. Add in the drawing board / water balloon target Dad, and everyone's happy. The treasure hunt ended up being plastic coins and rings scattered on the grass by my kids, but again only a few of the older kids commented on how it wasn't much of a "hunt." This week I've been trying to recover, but a very cute school choral concert and plans for a popsicle stand have taken up a lot of time.

I did find a shirt half taken apart already, so I started with that. I gave  away my favorite shirt bag to a grocery store bagger, so I wanted to see if I could make another just as good. As before, I used the body for one bag and the sleeves for another. The body bag folds up for storage and closes with a cuff. I attached the cuff to the side with the button placket, so now it doesn't work for closing the top when it's in use, but it holds it closed better when it's rolled up. It was handy to be able to shut the bag, but I was tired of having them get untidy in storage. I'll let you know how annoying that ends up being. If it's really bad, I can just add a button to the other side and call it a day.

I decided not to add fabric to make the sleeve bag bigger. It was going to be a quick and dirty lunch-size bag, but I ran out of time to finish it in one sitting. So it sat for a day, along with the hem scraps, and inspiration struck. I trimmed the hem section to about 3" wide. I set the sewing machine for "stun" (aka increased thread tension and stitch length to maximums) and turned it into a ruffle. I was going to turn the top edge of the bag to the outside, but the sleeve placket then showed and looked bad. So I used the shiny white webbing to hide the raw edge and for the handles. I made a ton of the ticking stripe handles already, so you'll see them in future bags. 

As with most of the bags on this blog, the handle straps are tucked into the hem on the inside. That way there are no raw edges to deal with. The handles end up being stitched in twice, so they're quite sturdy. And if you have a key clip that's the right size, you can attach it there. It may not look as sturdy as a box with an X, but I have not run into any problems yet and it's a lot quicker to sew. 

Now off to make a chocolate cream pie with Oreo crust (chocolate, chocolate, chocolate, the recipient said when asked if she'd prefer this to a graham cracker crust), attempt to catch my layout in trapeze class, get the girls from school, run the popsicle stand and take them and a friend for swimming and pizza before I collapse in an exhausted heap.