Unfinished Projects – FREE Project Bag Pattern

I’m in an organizing mood with my new sewing space and one of the things I’m working with now are half-finished projects. I don’t have a lot, but I need to get them organized so I can make a plan for finishing them. This made me think of an easy sewing and embroidery project I did last year. It’s a project bag that I use to corral fabrics and supplies for future projects or ones I need to finish.

Add Your Own Touch

Even though this is not one of my original patterns, I did put my own stamp on it by adding my favorite simple quilting technique and just a bit of machine embroidery to it. The pattern is the Piecekeeper Project Bag, and it comes from byAnnie.com. Here’s a link that you can use to download it for FREE. It comes with detailed instructions, and you can also watch free videos that show you the construction steps.

Quilting

In this post, I’ll cover the extra steps I added to make it my own. First of all, I quilted the back of the bag using a serpentine stitch, sewing vertical lines over the entire quilt sandwich with random placement. Instead of batting, the pattern calls for Soft and Stable, which is a thick foam stabilizer. You’ll find this included in the list of supplies found in the pattern instructions and it’s available on the byAnnie website. What I like about Soft and Stable is that it has more body than batting and your quilting stitch is very defined and really beautiful on your fabric. The Soft and Stable is placed between the inside fabric and the backing fabric, and then you quilt them together.

Add Machine Embroidery

The front of the bag is made with fabric mesh (also on the supply list and available from byAnnie) with a band of fabric added at the lower edge. There I added some machine embroidery that included lettering and a simple flower design from OESD. I cut the strip of fabric longer and wider than the instructions indicated and trimmed it to size after the stitching was complete. Most embroidery machines have one or more alphabets programmed in the machine. I selected the letters/words I wanted and programmed them to read: Must. Stitch. Stuff. (Sometimes I really feel like that!) I embroidered these words, stitching them in the center of lower band. Next, I stitched a little flower design at each end of the lettering. The design I used was from OESD and is available HERE. I placed one at the beginning and one at the end. On one of my bags, I alternated the colors of the words and added tiny buttons in the centers of the flowers as a finishing touch.

Once the bag is finished, you can put your materials in the bag with the notions and tools you may need to finish it. The mesh front lets you see what’s in the bag and the mesh has some stretch to it that gives you lots of room for fabrics, patterns, etc. This is also a great bag for taking materials to sewing classes. It’s nice and compact but can hold quite a bit of sewing supplies.