Sling Bags for Operation Christmas Child - Bag 1 "The Purse"

The Story

Our church always packs a large number of Operation Christmas Child boxes every year.  This year, I asked God what he wanted me to contribute to the project and he told me to get out my sewing machine and make bags... lots of bags... As a person of fairly meager financial means who is also crazy busy all the time, I wasn't quite sure how that was going to work, but I gave it a go anyhow.  I researched several simple purse designs online and came up with my own pattern that took elements from several others.  It was simple enough to be made by an advanced beginner, and used pieces that were small enough to be made from scraps.  Next, I asked for fabric donations.  "Empty out your scrap bin", I said.... and they did.  "Teach other people to make the bag,"  God said, and I did.  "Sew, sew, sew!" and I did..... aaaaaaaand my sewing machine gave out.  :(  But no worries, God wanted those bags!  I told my church family of my plight and was offered sewing machines from 3 different people!  Somehow, the heavens granted me the supernatural ability to time travel... or something, because in the space of a couple of months, even with my hectic schedule, I managed to make 100 bags!  ...and my friends, together they made almost 100 bags!  So now that collection week is over, I am already gathering fabric for next year and hoping that this little tutorial will teach even more people to make these bags so that they get into even more Operation Christmas Child boxes.

....on to the tutorial....

The Pattern

This is the only pattern piece you will really need.  The whole thing is 28" tall, the body portion at the bottom is 12" tall.  The width at the bottom is 8 and 5/8" and the strap width is 3 1/2".  Make sure you draw that 5/8" line like you see in the image, you will need it.  You'll want to curve the body portion into the strap portion.  You'll notice 2 different curves in the image.  I like to use a gentler curve for the purse version (bag 1), and a steeper curve for the school bag version (bag 2).  Ultimately, the curve is up to you.  This bag is pretty customizable, just pick something round to trace along... plate, bowl, cup, etc.  Just depends on how gentle/steep you want the curve to be.

To use the pattern, you can either cut whole panels or half panels.  To cut a whole panel, fold your fabric and line up that 5/8" seam allowance line with the fold.  Cut!

To cut a half panel, cut all the way to the edge of the pattern.  When you sew two half panels together, you'll get a whole.  You'll need that 5/8" seam allowance to make sure that they are the same size as the whole panels so that everything fits together.

You don't really need a pattern piece for the pockets.

The Bag Designs

As I said earlier, this bag is pretty customizable, you can change several things and make each bag a bit different.  I have come up with two basic bag designs: the purse (bag 1) and the school bag (bag 2).  They go together in virtually the same way with only a few differences.  Theses differences, however could be mixed and matched however you saw fit.

The Making of "The Purse" (Bag 1)

Even though I believe this to be a fairly simple pattern, I am going to try to be as thorough as possible so that sew-ers of all ability levels can make it.

Fabric Pieces

First of all, to make either bag you will need to have the equivalent of 4 whole panel pieces cut from your fabrics.  This can be from almost any combination of whole and half-cut panels, however, I like to have my 2 liner pieces cut as wholes.  Most of my purses have half panels for the outside and whole panels on the inside.  THIS purse, as you can see, is made from 1 whole panel and 2 half panels for the outside and 2 whole panels for the liner (the dark purple pieces).

You will also need 2 pieces of fabric that are the same size for your pocket.  These can be large, small, square, rectangular, or whatever.

I highly recommend pressing your fabric pieces.  I learned from experience long ago that it is easier to iron for a second than to fight with unruly fabric.





Step 1 - The Pocket

Sew your two pocket pieces, right sides together, and leave a 2" or so opening to turn it.  Try to leave the opening on the bottom edge of the pocket.  Clip corners, turn, and press.

 Step 2 - Half panels become whole panels

Sew together any half panels along center seam, right sides together.  Leave 5/8" seam allowance.  Press seam allowance to one side.

Step 3 - Attach Pocket
Sew the pocket to the right side of the purse front.  Sew close to edges on sides and bottom.  Make sure that the opening that you had left to turn the pocket is at the bottom.  It will get closed up as you stitch on the pocket.  I recommend using a ruler to center your pocket from side to side.  Make sure not to place it within an inch of any of the edges.

Step 4 - Outside Edges
Sew purse outside pieces together at outside edges, right sides together.  This will require pinning to keep it straight.  Do not stitch curve or the very ends of the straps.

Step 5 - Corners

If you were to turn it right-side-out now, it would look like this...

But we're going to add some dimension to those corners, so leave it wrong-side out a bit longer.  Use your hand to push into the corner and lay it flat.  Line up seams, pushing the seam allowance to one side.  Measure 2" from the corner, mark with pencil (1" or 1 1/2" would also work depending on what you want, just be consistent). Stitch along this 2" line.  This will make a triangle.  Trim off corner, leaving a seam allowance.  repeat on other corner.

Now you can turn it.  It should look something like this...

Step 6 - Purse Liner

Repeat steps 4 and 5 with your purse liner pieces.  You could even add pockets to those pieces as well if you wanted pockets on the inside of your purse.

Step 7 - Putting the purse together

At this point you should have your purse outsides done and turned right-side-out, as well as your purse liner done and turned wrong-side-out.  

Now you are going to place your right-side-out purse outer piece inside of your wrong-side out liner.  Pin the pieces together along inner curved edge, one side at a time.  Don't pin all 4 pieces together!  Just pin the liner and outer on 1 side, flip it over, and pin the liner and outer on the other side.

Sew together curved edge on each side.  Leave ends of straps open.

Step 8 - Turn and Press

Reach through the opening at the end of one strap to turn the whole thing right side out.  You'll want to work your hand through the inside, grab the strap on the other side and pull it back through the opening your hand is in.  It'll get a little tough to turn in the middle, but just keep working at it.  

When you've got it turned, you'll want to press the straps and the curved edge.

Step 9 - Finish Straps

Sew straps together at ends.  sew with purse outsides together so that the seam allowance is on the liner side.  Press seam allowance to one side (or press open, either way).

Turn strap edges under trifold style.  Stitch on either side of center strap seam.

Step 10 - Finishing Touches

You could be done here if you wanted.

...but I like to add a little plastic snap closure.  They're super easy and look nice.

Have fun!  ....and stay tuned for the instructions for Bag 2 (the school bag)

Here are my kids sporting some sweet bags!  My daughter has bag 1, my sons have bag 2.

Art Class Signage

I am now teaching 4 Art classes for homeschoolers, and 2 of them are at my house.  I decided this morning that it was high time for some official signage :)

To make this sign I took a trip to my local A.C. Moore and purchased 3 wooden letters (A,R,T) and a wooden palette.  The rest is all acrylic paint and wood glue.  I painted each letter to emulate a famous work of art, glued it all together and added some hand painted lettering.  Tomorrow I will give it a few coats with a clear sealer and affix a wire to the sides so that it can be hung on a hook outside my front door.  I'm really happy with it!  I should have made one of these a long time ago. :)

The Classroom

One of the major reasons we decided upon this house was the excellent back room off of the kitchen.  It was perfect for a classroom!  I can work in the kitchen and see what's going on because of the pass through and I have plenty of room for all of my bookshelves (and I can't seem to stop myself from adding more and more books, thus needing more and more bookshelves.  I mean who can turn down a good book?  Books are awesome... but I digress) and art supplies (something else I have tons and tons of... I am a bit of a hoarder of all things that I think I can make into something later).  I can also gate off the entry and keep the baby contained.  I have yet to work my make-over magic on the walls, but who doesn't love wood paneling?  ok... me, I don't love wood paneling!  For now, my strategy is to plaster the walls with posters, art work, bulletin boards and teaching aids... and also the windows... because there's not enough wall for all of the cool stuff I want to hang up.  Hmmmm.... the ceiling is empty.....

You may recognize the file cabinet in the corner.  It was a fun refinish job and is now full of art supplies.  The white bookshelves were cobbled together from one 10 foot tall unit intended for the garage.  We found someone giving away a garage full of these shelves on craigslist and are using them in several places.  I basically cut the sides of one shelf into 3 pieces and used some small scraps to make braces for the tops.  After attaching them all together the whole thing wanted to fold over and twist apart so I had to add a back to the center section.  I happened to have a scrap of 1/4 inch plywood laying about that did the job.  Actually, there is very little in this picture that was not a hand-me-down, free-find, cheap used treasure, or curbside rescue... Even some of the technology pieces!

How to make a quick hot ham and cheese sandwich: A guide for Moms

How to make a quick hot ham and cheese sandwich: A guide for Moms 
(a post based upon true life events)

1. Get a plate
2. Retrieve the loaf of bread from the pantry. Strike that. Figure out where the kids have put the loaf of bread.
3. Get the baby out of the middle child’s bedroom and shut the door.
4. Undo the twist tie on the bread that the middle child has managed to twist in 3 different directions at once.
5. Go see what that crash was in the living room.
6. Put bread in toaster.
7. Retrieve ham from fridge.
8. Take the schoolbook away from the baby before he rips the pages out.
9. Retrieve 4 slices, no, 2 slices of meat from the package.
10. Go see what that other crash in the living room was.
11. Retrieve 2 more slices of meat from the bag and put it all on a plate.
12. Pick up the bin of books that the baby has just dumped all over the floor and replace with a smaller bin that is harder for him to reach.
13. Put plate in microwave. Hear toast pop up.
14. Get butter.
15. Take whatever that was out of the baby’s mouth… Wonder where in the heck he found a giant bejeweled ring. 
16. Wash hands
17. Butter 1 piece of cold toast and start microwave.
18. Get the baby out of the cupboard.
19. Butter the second piece of cold toast.
20. Get the cheese out of the fridge.
21. It’s quiet…. Too quiet….
22. Get the baby out of the bathroom that you KNOW the door was just shut to a minute ago.
23. Retrieve plate of cold ham from the microwave
24. Put cold ham and cheese on cold buttered toast
25. Go see what that crash was in the hallway.
26. Get the baby off of the overturned hamper, pick up the dirty clothes.
27. Put cold “hot” sandwich in microwave for 20 seconds.
28. Pick up the bowl of holiday candy that the baby has just managed to get off of the edge of a table and spill all over the floor.
29. Retrieve lukewarm sandwich from microwave and place on dining room table.
30. Sit down
31. Get up and get the baby out of the trash
32. Put the baby in his bouncy seat from which he cannot escape.
33. Eat cold sandwich.

Shabby Chic Bistro Table

I always like to keep an eye out for free furniture to refinish.  Sometimes I find things in the free section of craigslist, sometimes things come from free cycle, sometimes a Facebook group, sometimes the local reuse center, sometimes curbside rescue, and sometimes friends.  I have a growing pile of items in my "to be refinished" queue (meaning there is ugly furniture placed strategically all over my house, in my garage, and on my back porch).  Some things are waiting to be fixed up for my house, some I intend to fix up to sell, and some things are simply waiting for something else to complete them.  This set is an example of the latter two.  The table came from a free site (craigslist I think).  It came with cigarette burns and a boy's named carved into the top.  

Not much to look at, but it had drop leaves and was structurally sound.  Without much (any) architectural detail to make it interesting, I knew this table would need a somewhat elaborate paint job and some cute chairs to make it sellable.  Enter my fantastic friends who keep an eye out for me.  Her neighbor was moving out and placing mountains of furniture at the curb.  I made SEVERAL trips and now can't get to the shelves in my garage... lol, eventually I'll finish all of these projects!  At any rate, one of the things I came back with was a pair of cute, petite wooden chairs.  They seemed a good fit.

    

First step, as always, was a good sanding.  Since the woods didn't really match, my intention was to completely paint the chairs and leave the base of the table intact.  I changed my mind when I saw the chairs post sanding.  They looked great just sanded!  Ok, so I guess I'll have to paint the table base.

I painted the entire table with primer  . . . . and the brush left awful deep brush mark grooves everywhere.  Sigh, ok. . . maybe a roller next time, or spray primer.  So I sanded it again.  Nope still there.  So I sanded some more.  grrr.... new lesson learned.  All sandpapers are not created equal, regardless of grit).  The sandpaper from the dollar store sucks.  :P So eventually I sanded away the brush marks, lol, and made my way to my strange assortment of free paints.  There is all sorts of talk on furniture refinishing blogs and whatnot about the best paint and finishes to use for furniture refinishing.  Chalk paint, milk paint, wax, poly, etc.  I have always been more of a "work with what I have" kinda girl.  Acrylic latex house paint?   yep.  That'll do.  I chose some leftovers of colors that I had already mixed for other projects and made some minor adjustments.  To tie the chairs in with the table visually I decided to paint the seats.

I painted the table base, edges and one chair seat with a grayish turquoise, the table top white, and the other chair seat yellow.  Now, for that "elaborate" paint job.  I had been loving stencil work lately, but can't afford to buy the ones for sale on the internet.  No matter, I'm handy with an Xacto knife and it only has to survive one project, so I'll make my own.  I found a picture I liked, printed it out, traced it, and spent an afternoon cutting tiny shapes out of an overhead transparency sheet.  Yeah, that took a while, but it was way more affordable!

Now there are lots of different ways to paint with a stencil, but stippling seems to be the most fool proof for this sort of job.  They, of course, make special round brushes for this purpose.  I just used an old acrylic brush I had in a drawer that had some bulk to it and it seemed to work fine.  I randomly (but somewhat evenly) stenciled blue flowers all over the table top and let it dry.  Then orange, dry.  Then yellow, dry.  I lightly wiped off the stencil between colors but didn't get too crazy.  I would rather have a bit of dried paint on it than tear it after all.  Next the "shabby chic" effect.  I sanded the whole thing down again, making sure to sand some places more than others, especially the edges so it looked like wear and tear.

Since this table was intended for an eat-in kitchen or something of the like, it needed to be able to stand up to use and food.  The chairs needed a little bit of strengthening, so I replaced older somewhat stripped screws with newer slightly larger screws and tightened everything up.  I still needed a clear coat of some sort though.  My original plan was to coat the table top and chair seats with some brushing lacquer that I had picked up from the reuse center for free, but after doing some research I discovered that using that over my paints could end badly.  Apparently the solvents in the brushing lacquer are so strong that it could actually dissolve some of the paints underneath.  Sheesh... that would be disappointing after all that work.  So I bit the bullet and paid full price for a new can of polycrylic.  I know, totally not me right?  But, sometimes you just have to have the right tool for the job.  I followed the instructions on the can precisely, and applied 3 coats to the table top and chair seats.  It worked great.  Here is the before and after of my shabby-chic bistro table! . . . and yes, it is sold.  Hope you like it!

The Garden Bed

Recently, my neighbor across the street moved out and a group of people spent a few weeks cleaning out the house.  Over the course of that time they placed several things at the curb that I brought home.  One of the neatest things they threw out was this Ethan Allen 4 post bed frame.  Of course, it was filthy beyond measure and had a couple of things coming apart, but that's just elbow grease.

I took this picture after I cleaned it and glued the pieces back together, so you can't really see how much work I did there, but suffice it to say that after seeing all the gunk that what was on it I didn't really want to use it in my house for a bed frame.  Instead, I decided to refinish it as a garden "bed" frame.

After sanding the whole thing down I gave it a few coats of exterior paint and added a mesh trellis.  Inside the bed frame I am attempting to grow a container vegetable garden.  I haven't had a lot of luck vegetable gardening in the past, but I am willing to try again!  I figure the bed will look really cute with all sorts of vining vegetables growing on it.

A few months later it has some life!  Still have some issues with my brown thumb, lol.... I think I need to move the whole thing to a more sunny spot (that'll be interesting with my tomato plant all grown up through it).  The bed frame is holding up fairly well to the elements I suppose.  We have had a REALLY wet couple of months and some cracks have appeared in the bed frame from the constant moisture.  I may attempt to fill the cracks with wood filler and put some more exterior paint on it to give it some more life (if it's ever dry long enough)...  but I knew a piece of wood furniture was likely to have a limited life span out in the elements when I started anyway.

Once I get some more landscaping accomplished I plan to move this to a more manicured looking spot with more sunlight.  Everything is still a work in progress around here :).

City Room

When we first moved into our home I decided that this room was one of the worst.  The blue and red is atrocious, there were holes chewed in the wall and door by a large dog, and the carpet smelled like a dog as well.  Unfortunately, we were financially unable to deal with the carpet after putting everything into closing costs, but after some vacuuming and carpet deodorizer the smell seems to have left (yay!).  Eventually I'll get some new carpet, but it'll do for now.

At any rate, This room was high on my priority list, and thus my second project.  First, wall repairs were done.  Spackle does wonders, I even used it to patch the door!  After using Kilz on the entire room (including that lowered bit of the ceiling... seriously who paints the ceiling like that?), I was ready to start on the walls.  At this point I had acquired many different partially full gallons of interior latex acrylic paint in various colors from various sources... Some were the remaining colors from the previous owners, some were gathered from curbside and craigslist, and some were from a local reuse center.  Lots of paint,  but not enough of one color for an entire room... I knew what I wanted (I had a pinterest board full of ideas after all), and I have a good eye for color mixing, so I got out my trusty paint mixing drill attachment and started mixing what I had together.

I knew I wanted a light brown for most of the walls, so I mixed that first (you can make brown out of almost anything).  I had also found a really cute room on Pinterest that had a 3 tone striped wall in turquoise, orange, and green.  No problem there... I added some white to the leftover turquoise from my daughter's room and played a bit with some of the previous owner's leftover gallons of paint for the orange and green.  Believe it or not, those colors are also significantly lightened.  The master bedroom is currently painted entirely dark orange... even the trim (yuck).

This room has a neat little angled wall, so I decided to incorporate that into my next idea.  Who says you can only have one accent wall in a room?!  My son really likes transportation and I wanted to do a mural in his room, so a city seemed to be the way to go. First, I got out my trusty Home Depot yard stick and drew a simple outline in pencil.. A city skyline is mostly straight lines, so with a little bit of measuring, that wasn't so difficult.  I also drew some fun flying vehicles in the sky.  To keep the color scheme of the room from going totally nuts I stuck with a darker brown for the building silhouettes.  This brown was an unaltered left over color from the previous owners.  The trim in the hall bathroom is currently that color... and the walls are dark green.... yep.

So, after painting the buildings dark brown I added details in white.  I didn't want an overly colorful mural with all of the other colors going on in the room.  Cute right?  But, not done yet... this mural needs to glow in the dark!

Insert Martha Stewart's glow in the dark paint.  It's a little pricey for my cheapskate tendencies, but I waited for my 40% off a single item coupon from Joanne's and splurged a bit... plus I have a ton left over for more projects.... I also have a white tank top that looks perfectly clean in the light, but has glowing smudges on it in the dark (a fact which I continually forget when getting dressed, lol).  It took a few coats on the windows and moon, but it didn't take too long to do, and you can't hardly tell that the glow-in-the-dark paint is there during the daytime.  

After finishing the mural, I decided that it needed something else... a road shelf?  sure!  My son loves matchbox cars, so this gives him a fun place to play and interact with his city mural.  Like the shelves in my daughter's room, these are leftover from a cheap bookcase that didn't survive the move.  Because of the location of this shelf (next to the door), I knew that sharp corners would be an issue.  So I traced a curve from a plate and then cut on the line with a jigsaw.  After scuffing the surface up with some sandpaper I painted all sides of the shelf the same color as the mural.  Then I simply painted the road on them.  Surprisingly, several months later, the shelf is still attached to the wall.  I was seriously expecting my son to break it (lol, he is VERY rough on toys and furniture).

The bed in his room is an Ikea bunk bed.  The low profile of his bed works well with the low ceiling.  He has had it for a while so when we moved it was covered in stickers and marker, but it cleaned up pretty nice.  Honestly, I was surprised.  I was expecting to have to paint it.  But after using my favorite Dollar Tree cleaner, Totally Awesome, on it, it looked great (seriously, this stuff will clean anything.  I used it in my art room to get virtually every kind of art supply off of the tables... even sharpie).  The dresser was a refinished garage find (see entry in the furniture section).  All in all, I am much happier with the finished look of this room than I am with my daughter's room.

Of course, it didn't look all nice and polished like that for long... sigh...