After making my super-cute-as-a-button coffee cosy (which I’ll post later), I decided to try my hand at a bag to compliment the look ;)
You’ll need
- 6 x felt sheets
- Wadding & tshirt
- Embroidery thread
- 4 x buttons & pins
- Rope
- Needle & thread
- 2.5 hours
Step 1: Create a paper template of a heart (about A3 size) and use it to cut 2 x hearts from the tshirt. It doesn’t have to be neat.
Step 2: Half the template and cut out 4 x felt shapes, leaving roughly a 2cm gap around the edge. Leave to one side.
Step 3: Felt is a very forgiving, durable fabric which won’t fray so we’ll use that for the inner bag ‘edges’. Cut the top of the heart template off and use to cut 4 x felt shapes, remembering to leave a 2cm gap.
Step 4: Pin and sew the felt heart ‘tops’ onto their relevant place on the tshirt templates using a cute embroidery cross stitch. ONLY sew along the bottom, not the upper curves at this stage.
Step 5: Pin the two heart shapes together, ‘wrong’ side out and baste (wide) stitch along the bottom of the bag from and to the highlighted places. Put to one side.
Do not stitch above the red line together- this is the opening.
Step 6: Cut and stitch together leftover felt to cover 2 x 25inch stretches of rope for the handles. (25in x 2in should do) Encase the rope, pinning along the edges and leaving the two ends free.
Step 7: Use embroidery thread to stitch along the pin line, keeping as close to the rope as possible. Trim any jagged/wide edges.
Step 8: Sew the handles to the outer sides of the bag at the height of the heart curves.
Step 9: Machine/hand stitch the lower half of the bag together along the baste stitch. When done, remove the wide stitch. The base is complete.
Step 10: Cut out two heart shapes from the wadding (slightly smaller than the bag shape) and pin down to both sides. Make sure you aren’t pinning each side of the bag together at this stage (easily done, believe me!). Put to the side.
Step 11: Embroidery/cross stitch the two halves to each felt heart from earlier together down the centre. Sew on four giant buttons as illustrated to one heart- these are the holes of our heart ‘button’.
Step 12: Pin the outer felt hearts to each side of the bag base and stitch around the edges with embroidery thread using a chunky running stitch. Done.