embroidered linen laundry bag

So I had this great idea to make a laundry bag for the mother daughter camp we went on recently. But of course life got in the way and I was still learning how to do embroidery on my machine (and still learning). So now that I’m in school holidays I’ve whipped this up in an afternoon. And in the interest of full disclosure my dear husband had taken 4 of the big kids to the movies which did make sewing time a little easier.

Embroidering on my machine is so much fun. Thanks to Brother Australia, I’m using a Brother Dreamweaver 6200D but you could do the embroidery on any embroidery machine and any size hoop. You can even make the bag and do the stitching in hand yourself. And I can leave the room when it’s doing the embroidery and then it plays a little tune and comes up with a smiley face when its finished sewing. So sweet.

The linen I used for this bag is by MoMo for Moda and so beautiful. I bought it when I was selling fabric but just couldn’t part with it all. It’s nice and thick which gives the bag and also the stitching a bit of support. You can use any fabric but I find a good quality quilting cotton or linen/cotton blend or a cotton canvas works really well when you are embroidering the font and using for a more durable bag.

What you’ll need 

rotary cutter, ruler and mat (or scissors)

about 80cm of fabric (112cm wide)

embroidery thread for your machine

tear away stabiliser if you doing machine embroidery

regular sewing thread

pins and sewing supplies

Instructions

Cut your fabric for the bag. I use my rotary cutter, ruler and mat to get a nice neat rectangle. For this sized bag I used about 60cm (about 24 inches) x width of fabric. Trim off the selvages

Cut a 2 inch strip of fabric going across the width of the fabric which we will use for the bag tie later on.

Attach tear away stabiliser to the wrong side of your fabric where you want the embroidery. I used my medium embroidery hoop (my machine came with 2 and this is the smaller of the 2) and a piece of stabiliser just a bit bigger than my hoop.

I like an iron on stabliser that is tear away which means it just tears away from my work when I’ve finished. This is what it looks like after I quickly ripped off the excess stabiliser. Just those little bits to remove and a few threads to trim but very neat.

Attach hoop to fabric with the stabiliser and a little tip is to have the excess of your fabric to the right away from the end of your embroidery arm. Take your hoop to your machine.

Select the font you want, if I wanted to use the font in large letters then I would have needed the bigger hoop (and I’d already hooped up my fabric and stabiliser) so I used medium font and upsized it a little.

Now let the machine do the work.

Remove the hoop and stabiliser and let’s work on the rest of the bag. At the iron press over the tie fabric once across the width of the fabric and then open up and press each end in towards the centre line. Press again.

Fold over one side to the other and press well along the tie.

Create a pocket for your tie. Start by tidying up our edges. Fold over the top of the side edge of your fabric a little bit and a little bit again and press well. Repeat on the other top side of the fabric top.

Now press over the top of the fabric going right along the top edge of the fabric by a little bit.

Press over again by a width that is more than your finished tie/ribbon/binding folded over.

At the sewing machine you are going to sew your tie from one end to the other. Set aside.

Sew the folded over top of your fabric from one end to the other.

Now with right sides of the fabric together you are going to pin the side and bottom of the bag together. Sew from just at the bottom of where you created the opening for your ties and sew down the side of the bag and then across the bottom of the bag.

Now take your tie and put a safety pin in one end and a pin in the other. The safety pin will help you push through the tie and the pin will stop the other end from getting lost in your tie casing.

I tie a knot in each end of the tie and trim the excess fabric. Voila the bag ties are done

You can overlock or zig zag your inside edges. I just zig zagged on my machine and trimmed the corners and I was done. Stand back and admire your bag.