Bag Bender

I recently discovered the Green Bag Lady through another blog. I entered one of her give-aways, and won a handmade shopping bag for Christmas. I used it at the grocery store today, but didn't take a picture.
I happened upon her site when she was blogging about making bags and getting rid of wrapping paper. Unfortunately the thought never entered my mind and I have already wrapped half of my presents, but the other half.......hmmmm...... I could whip something up. So I measured out the size of a DVD, a hardback book, and then made a larger size for clothing, and whipped out a couple bags. I simply put the right sides together, and sewed the three sides together. Then flip the top over a little bit and top stitched around to make it looke hemmed. I cut a 24 inch piece of ribbon, and sewed the middle to a side seam about 4 inches down, and viola...... wrapping bags. I've now made oodles of them.

I also took some muslin I had on hand, attached a thin ribbon to it, sewed it to the back side of a scrap piece of fabric and wrote on it. This is my reuseable tag (you can see the backside of it in the top picture). It slips through the ribbon tie on the bag, and I can reuse those next year too (because I'll be giving gifts to a lot of the same people, right?). Both the bag and tag take a small amount of time to make, and I plan on making a bunch today to use. If you get one for Christmas, and can't imagine using it, just hand it back to me and I'll give it to you again next year.