Drawstring Evening Bag

Drawstring Evening Bag

When you are all dressed up in that special dress, where do you put all of your little necessities without lugging along your big, clunky purse? This dainty evening bag features an elegant monogram letter, drawstring, and cords that bring to mind Victorian era dinners and dances.

Supplies needed:

● 1/3 yard of fabric or large scraps from making your dress.

● 2 yards of cording● Stiff cardboard● 2 grommets, large enough to pass two

thicknesses of your cording.● Embroidery designs

Daisy Alphabet Daisy Border

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Drawstring Evening Bag

Instructions:

Decide how large you want your little bag to be and then cut out your fabric. We decided on a 9-inch-high cylindrical bag, 5 inches in diameter. Starting with a 5" circle for the bottom, we measured for the width of the fabric to make the cylinder piece (the circumference of the 5" circle plus 1" for seam allowances, which is 17" wide by 10" high).

We then marked the dimensions of the cylinder piece on the fabric and placed the designs where we wanted them, centering the monogram and placing the daisy border along the top, leaving enough fabric to hem the top.

Next sew out the designs. After embroidery is complete, cut out the embroidered cylinder piece and another piece the same size for lining. Cut out two circles that have a diameter 1" larger than your finished bottom, then cut out a circle of cardboard the same size as the finished bottom.

Place the cylinder piece and lining, right sides together, and sew the seam to form the top edge of the bag.

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Drawstring Evening Bag

Press the seam open and then bring the side edges, right sides, together, and sew the back seam of the bag.

On the embroidered piece, determine where you want the drawstrings that will tighten/loosen the bag. We chose to position them on either side of the monogram.

Mark where the grommets are to be placed. (We placed these 2" from the top seam.)

Set the grommets into the embroidered, outside piece only.

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Drawstring Evening Bag

Fold the unembroidered piece down and to the inside of the cylinder to form the lining. You can see the lining fabric through the hole of the grommet.

Next, make the casing for the cords by making stitching lines along either side of the grommets, and through both the outer and lining fabrics.

Use a zipper foot to get as close to the grommet as you can.

Now for the bottom: Sew one of the fabric circles into the bottom of the cylinder. It is much like putting the ends into a bolster pillow.

Then take the cardboard circle and the other fabric circle and use a hot glue gun to bring the fabric over the edges of the cardboard. Glue it down.

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Drawstring Evening Bag

With the right side up, insert the cardboard circle into the bottom of the bag. You can hot glue it into the bag if you like.

Cut your piece of cording into two 1-yard pieces.

Starting at one grommet, insert the cording into the casing, and bring it through the entire casing and out the same grommet hole. Repeat with the second piece of cording in the other grommet.

Tie the two ends of the cording together several inches from the ends.

You can now pull on the cords to draw the top of the bag closed.

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Drawstring Evening Bag

Add a decorative bead to the end of each piece of cording.

Click here for a printable version of these project instructions. You'll need to have Adobe Acrobat Reader installed on your computer. If you don't have it, you can download a free copy by clicking on the icon below.

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