Santa sacks

My daughter, Nicky, has recently moved into a new house and needed Christmas items so I decided to make her family Santa sacks. I found this lovely red and cream fabric range at Spotlight fairly inexpensively.

When I laid out my first piece of fabric for cutting I noticed it had cuts in it!  I was very disappointed and I was worried about the other fabrics but it turned out to just be on this piece. As I was making this pattern up as I went I cut around the cuts in the fabric and that was how I determined what size the bags would be.

These are basic lined drawstring bags.  I wanted them lined because I like the tidy look.  Once I stitched the lining and the front together I had to work out where to do the string channel.  I originally decided to do the channel 5 inches or so from the top of the bag and although I would have liked the look it's a waste of space inside the bag.  This needed to go near the top edge for maximum toy storage!

I then started making the string for the bags with leftover lining fabric.  I have these nifty turn through tools which make it easy but in the end I thought it was way too much work so I bought extra long shoe laces.

Which I tea stained!

I embroidered all the names.  This one is for another family I didn't get around to making bags for in the end.  But there's always next year ha ha!

I wanted the name tags to look like luggage tags.  I put the embroidered side and a patterned fabric right sides together and stitched them leaving a hole for turning.  When I went to turn them one of them didn't look quite like the others!  Oops!  Because I'd trimmed the corners I had to carefully resew that one.

And here is a finished bag.  I inserted the end of the laces through a buttonhole in the luggage tag.  

Four bags ready for labels.

I decided to fill one to see what it would look like.  I put a rolled up single doona (duvet/comforter) inside and there's plenty of space left in it so I'm really happy with the size!  I put it next to my fireplace to photograph and captured Minnie in the glass!