Personal gift bag tutorial

I thought I would try to do my first tutorial on how to make the little gift bags that I am making for my partner's sisters.

Equipment I have used:

1. Janome 350e embroidery machine
2. Husquvarna Viking Emerald 118 sewing machine
3. Babylock Evolution Serger/Overlocker
4. Janome digitizer pro software
   

Materials:

1. white cotton fabric (I have used curtain lining)
2. white lining fabric
3. wadding 
4. white cotton thread for quilting and sewing
5. coloured threads for embroidery work.

Instructions for quilting the fabric: 

 First cut the required size of fabric, wadding and lining.

I decided to cut a large piece of fabric this time and quilt that before cutting out the required size for each of the 5 bags I am making


 Depending on the size of the fabric, you may need

to roll the fabric to get it through the arm of the machine, I rolled mine in stages.

Above you can see the cross section of the quilting.Once the fabric has been quilted we now need to think about adding the embroidery.

I use the Janome digitizer pro software to design my embroidery and this is final stage of the design before you transfer it onto your memory stick which goes into the embroidery machine.

 Once I had created my design I am ready to hoop the fabric before starting the embroidery.

Select your preferred stabiliser and cut to size before hooping.

Fabric hooped you are ready to place it on the machine and start the embroidery.

Here are the first three I have finished - two more to go, one for Debbie and one for Sally and then we are ready to start assembling the little bags.

More tomorrow. 

Well apart from getting an urgent phone call for work, I managed to make a start on my bags around 10:30am.

Ok, so I wasn't happy with Barbara's embroidery which I used the multicoloured thread -  for some reason the bobbin thread came through to the front , undoubtedly due to tension problems, and therefore didn't look as nice as the others so I sewed a fresh one (sometimes things don't go so smoothly).

Once each square was completed I cut a corresponding backing square and using the overlocker machined one of the side seams first.  Second stage was to serge the open edge of bag on a stitch length 0 to give a satin stitch effect.  Next I machined the other side seam and the bottom seam to complete all sides of the bag.

Finishing touches:

I had some beautiful black and white trim which I stitched all around the bag using a small zig zag stitch leaving enough to create a loop.  I then took some elastic, secured it with a few zig zag stitches back and forth before stretching it, and using the previous stitching as a guide attached the elastic to the inside of the bag.

Job done.

I have filled the bags with travel sized bars of soap, some nice body lotion and will pop out before Christmas to buy some other goodies to fill the bag.

Total time taken approximately 2 hours per bag.  Lets hope the ladies like their personal gifts.