Bag It...

Cute little bag made of felt....easy to do and fun to decorate.

Your bag items include a sheet of directions, felt, button, pearl cotton, and beads.

Before you start anything make a copy of the directions...then you will have an intact one for your collection.

Cut out the flap detail and pin it securely to one end of the felt. Position it right on the edge.

Sharp scissor make easy work of this.  I like the pointed ones from Hobby Lobby.  Notice they have the dreaded "DO NOT USE" ribbon on the handle for all unsuspecting visitors...ha!

Center snowflake is drawn out for  you....if you want you can sew right thru the paper.  I broke up the long stitches into smaller ones so they wouldn't gap.  I took my first try at this out NUMEROUS times as they were wonky.  Don't stress...every snowflake is different.  I got the snowflake idea off of Pinterest.  They have several examples.  Just wing it and add lots of beads to cover any oops.

Use some "sloppy" x's across the edge of the flap to keep everything in place.  Then measure down according to the directions to mark the bottom of the bag.  I like to do all the stitching and beading before sewing the bag shut....you will thank me!

Now for the corner details....a few straight stitches and a couple of lazy daisy stitches or whatever you want your snowflake to look like....after I did mine I decided it looked more like a plant than a flake....go figure!

Mount your stitching on the comic board and trim the outside edge with rick rack.  Embellish ever so often with a bead...you can attach it with small stitches before you sew the outside edges together or do like I did and glue it on afterwards.

Blanket stitch along the outside edge...or do a running stitch, or do some x's...or whatever floats your boat.

Pop the stitching on the bag and you have a cute bag for a special gift for a special person.  Or fill it up with winter greenery and sit where you can enjoy it.  This technique was inspired by the absolutely beautiful felt work done by Snowberry....check out her blog or Facebook pages....you will absolutely fall in love with felt.

Enjoy and I will hopefully post a couple more techniques this next week.
M