gift bags galore

It's been a very busy few days here. I had 5 gift bags to make for my daughter's birthday sleepover and as usual left it to the last minute to get down to it. I have had a set of 5 Alexander Hendry fat quarters in my stash for years now looking for a project just like this. As I was in a rush I searched the internet for a tutorial based on using fat quarters and with everything already worked out so I could just get going without figuring out measurements etc. The result of my search was a great fat quarter bag  tute called Poochie Bags from The Happy Zombie.

Once I got going it wasn't to bad and if I was making a bunch of stuff like this again I would definitely cut out card templates to draw round instead of measuring each square out as I did this time, wish this had occurred to me earlier in the process. Also doing all the cutting in one go and sewing the same pieces on each bag at the same time would save a lot of faff and scutter too. Some of my quarters were slimmer than others so they're not all exactly the same size, in fact one set of handles is far shorter than the others but no matter.
I also missed out the pockets on the front as the main fabric I was using has a large motif and I didn't want to obscure it.

I wasn't sure about the sewing of the handles as you end up with 2 rows of stitching on top of each other which didn't please my inner neat freak. I tried making the handles by sewing a 1/4" seam and then turning the tube right side out which means you only have one set of stitching showing by the time you sew them onto the bag. However this does produce slightly flimsy handles so maybe I'd add some medium weight interfacing if I were to do it again.

Anyway they seemed to be well received by the girls which is the main thing :)