Patchwork bags
The picture shows a bag for my footstool and one for my fold up music stand, to prevent scratches in transit. They are made from my favourite type of quick machine made patchwork. If you have a rotary cutter it is incredibly fast.
This looks best if the fabric changes at random intervals. Therefore there are two important design points to bear in mind:
- Cut the fabrics into strips of the required width (remember to allow for turning on both long edges)
- Sew the fabric strips together along the short edges & press the seams.
- Decide how wide you want your finished piece to be. As well as allowing for turnings, allow a bit extra so you have scope to straighten up the edges for any wobbles.
- Cut a piece of this length from the long strip you have made.
- Sew this piece to the side of the long strip & trim off level at the bottom.
- Repeat until you have the required width if fabric.
- Press the whole thing and straighten the edges of the piece.
This looks best if the fabric changes at random intervals. Therefore there are two important design points to bear in mind:
- If all your fabric is the same width, you might want to divide some of them up before you start making the long strip.
- As you sew the long edges to make the fabric, you need to make sure you don't have a lot of strip joins adjacent to a join in the previous row. Even more important you don't want it so it looks as though the seams should have matched, but you messed up. To avoid this, chop a random piece off the top of the long strip before joining it to the first "measured" strip. Keep an eye open for this problem as you go. Any pieces you chop off the strip are not wasted - just sew them onto the end of the strip.