Super Simple Sewing Gift Bags

Gift bags are fun to make and fun to give and they're super simple. These are just two that I happened to have that I wanted to show you. This particular little little one I literally made in less than five minutes. It was for my little granddaughter and she's just a couple years old but we like to make cookies together. So for Christmas I realized they didn't have a gingerbread boy. So I picked up some little Christmas cookie cutters which had the gingerbread boy and I thought, how am I going to wrap these forks, I didn't have a box. And I thought, a gift bag. So this particular gift bag has I went ahead and put a tie on it that is attached to the bag so that it wouldn't get lost because children have a way of losing things. But it was very simple and I just simply turned over the top edge there and you can make gift bags in literally any size and shape. The biggest consideration is making sure that you make it wide enough for your objects to easily get in and out of the gift back. My husband and I also like to make wine and I have a group of friends that I get together with for dinner and we're all quilters. And so every Christmas we give them our latest homemade brew and I didn't wanna just give them the plain bottle so I usually will make gift bags. And I've been doing this tradition for several years now and they all seem to look forward to it and they always have to bring back the bottle to get next year's rendition. So it was very interesting though because we were at dinner and I passed out the wine bottles and one of my friends said, oh, CJ I don't know which I like better your wine or the gift bags. And I was totally taken back because I didn't think it was that big of a deal because they're so easy to make. And she said, oh no, every year you do something different and I'm always anxious to see what you're gonna come up with. Usually I will take fat quarters and I cut them in half in the 18 inch direction. And that way it's plenty tall for my wine bottle. And it's almost wide enough, but you need about 12 inches to go around the wine bottle and have enough room to put it in and out easily. So I would just take and sew in about a 4 inch strip of fabric into there to give it enough fabric but it gave it a really interesting little decorative touch. So you can do things like that. On this particular one rather than just doing the same fabric throughout, I put a little cuff in all I did was sew it around the top and tuck it down inside. If you're gonna do it for a wine bottle you wanna come down about seven inches. And the real ticket to these little bags is the ribbon. If you pick a really fun, fancy ribbon it just dresses it up and says, wow, I'm really special. So today I wanna show you how to make the most basic, simplest, fastest gift bag that you can imagine. So I'm going to show you for a wine bottle. You need 12 inches of fabric. I went ahead and turned under the top edge a quarter of an inch. Now, what's going to happen here is this fabric is going to be down inside of the wine bottle to make the cuff and you can do this one of two ways. You can either go ahead and sew your fabric together first and turn it to the right side and then turn your cuff down in. Or if you wanted, you can go ahead and measure down and have it be part of the seam. The only problem with that is that at the top of the bag you're going to see your seam, just like you do on this one. It will show up. But most people aren't looking that closely, they're too impressed with the actual bag. But I'm gonna show you how I did it for this one. So I've done my quarter of an inch seam. I like to do a French seam on my bag because it just looks a little bit nicer. Yeah, most people aren't gonna go inside and check it out, but you never know and it makes it have a very durable seam and gives it a little bit more of a professional look. So for an extra couple of minutes I'm all about making it professional. To do a French seam, you're going to start with the right sides out. And I do a cheater French seam typically on the French seam, you do a full seam allowance and then you trim the seam back. I'm all about saving time so what I do is an 1/8 of an inch seam with the right sides out, wrong sides together. And you want to go ahead and just back tack. And then, we're just going to sew right down here. So for the wine bottle with a cuff, you want to allow approximately 23 inches. A wine bottle is somewhere in the neighborhood of 12 inches tall. You want a couple of three, four inches however high you want this to cover the top of the wine bottle, plus you need room at the bottom for the base. So I find about 23 inches works well. My scissors. So you go ahead, you have done your seam on the right side. You're going to turn it inside out. And I am all about pressing. So now that I've got that, I'm not pressing the seam open I'm just basically coming along that seam and giving it a quick press to make sure that it's flat and that it's been pulled out. You kind of have to roll it with your fingers. You can kind of see where that's rolling over there to flatten it. Now that I've got that pressed on the wrong side, I'm going to come back and stitch that same seam again except this time I'm going to do a 1/4 of an inch for my seam allowance. And I'm using white thread, if you notice my fabric is darker so I probably should have pulled out a darker colored thread but it really doesn't matter because this is on the inside. The cuff is going to be turned over and honestly, I don't think anybody would ever even know what color of thread you used. We're at the very end. Believe it or not, we're almost done. So now you're going to turn it back out again to the right side. I like, this is just personal preference you can put the seam to the side. I like to open it up so that my seam is centered down the middle of the bag. Go ahead and press it and as much as possible you're pressing it to one side, you kind of have to reach in there and feel. And I try to do it so that I'm not putting creases in the bag but sometimes it's inevitable. If you have little threads showing through from the seam you can just pick them through usually or trim them. If you do get some creases, just hold it up and give it a little steam. Usually it'll take it out or you can roll up a towel and stick it in there and give it a quick press. So now that we've got that done, we're going to put that seam to the center of the bag. We're going to come back at the bottom, we're going to right sides out, do our one 1/8 inch seam again for another French seam. We're going to reach in and turn it. And I like to I find I just use a long ruler, slip it in there and then I can push the very gently of course, kind of push that point out so that your seam will be nice and flat. You don't want it to be dog-eared. Go ahead, I like to do it right side up so I can see the previous French seam. I'm going to come along the very bottom. I'm going to do a 1/4 of an inch seam maybe just a little bit more with the bottom if you want a little extra reassurance for whatever reason. This is one of those projects where literally close enough is good enough. It does not have to be super accurate. It's very forgiving project. Trim your ends. We're gonna turn the bag one more time. If you're using these for alcohol or any kind of bottles they're wonderful for flavored vinegars or balsamic vinegar, olive oil, anything fancy like that that you might want to give to give it, dress it up just a little bit, make sure you've measured the bottle and wrap your fabric around and make sure that you can indeed have enough room to slide it in and out. When I get done, I just like to give that seam one more press. At this point in time, I take the top and I put it inside and I scooch it down so it's down about seven inches. And you can play with this with your bottle to make sure that it's down low enough that when you put your ribbon on, the ribbon is capturing all of this. If you really want to if you're worried about it coming out, you can go ahead and stitch in the ditch here to tack it down. That's an option. You can make this with two seams if you want but I don't like to take the extra time sewing but if you did two seams you could certainly run a line of stitching. And that quick, there is your little gift bag all set for giving when you get it all down to the edge that you want. Go ahead and give a quick press on the top so that has a nice crisp edge. Put your bottle in, pick a pretty ribbon, tie a gorgeous bow and stand back and wait for the compliments.