Toy Sack Tutorial

If only good old Santa had left us his sack I might not have had to make one of these.  After Christmas our house is overflowing with toys, and I've been working on trying to find solutions for all of the toy chaos.  The sack would be great for laundry though too, or maybe even to hang in the garage to catch soccer balls and other sports stuff.

I made this in about a couple of hours, which was almost as long as it took me to pick out the fabric in the first place.  Do you know how difficult it is to find fabric with some purple in it?  I wanted to match the walls of Lu's room and I had such a difficult time.  Clearly the rest of the world doesn't feel the same way about purple as Lu does.   I can't say that I blame them.

But I digress.   

Here's a quick tutorial to show you how I made my toy sack.  The base of the sack is just a circle.  Mine was 13 inches, but you could certainly use the basic geometry equation:

 circumference = pi * diameter to change the size.

You'll need two rectangle pieces, the base of which will attach to the circle.  The length of the rectangle will be half of the circumference plus the addition of a half inch or so for a seam allowance.  You can make the fabric as tall as you like, since its height is irrelevant to the size of the circle base.

You'll want to cut an additional 3 pieces of your lining material.  Here are my pieces cut out:

I used upholstery fabric for the outside and material similar in weight to home dec fabric for the inside lining. I also cut out a label from chalkboard fabric.  If you want to have a strap to attach to the bag, you can cut that out of your outside fabric.  I didn't serge the edges of my pieces, mainly because my outer fabric isn't good for anything but surface washing.   If you are planning on putting your bag in the wash frequently, I'd make sure to prewash your fabric and serge your edges before you start.

First, sew up only 1 side of your bag.  Place on your label where you want it.

Here's my label sewn on.

Now I made my strap.  I made mine velcro and attached it to the opposite side of the bag. 
I folded my strap like this:

And then sewed it around the edges to get this:

Then I added velcro.

And then I attached it to the back of the bag, in the center.

Now it is time to attach the bottom of the bag.  This is the tricky part.  Make sure you do this before sewing up the other side of the bag.  I HIGHLY recommend pinning.  Make sure that the good sides of the material are facing each other.  (Think a sandwich with the good stuff--peanut butter and jelly--facing each other on the inside.)

Sew slowly.

Once you've made it all around you can cut small slits every inch or so so that the fabric will lay flatter.

Now it's time to sew the junction.  This is the point of the base where both sides meet up.  Starting from the base, sew all the way up to the top, thus creating a bag.

Here's my sack at this point.  Ready for lining.

Repeat the steps above with the lining.  Once you've made your lining sack, place it inside the bag, lining up the side seams. 

Now it is time to attach the lining to the bag.  I folded down both of my rough edges and just sewed around the edge. 

Once you've made it all around, just turn down the edges.  Tada!  You've finished your bag!

I used the strap to hang this over the side of the bed.  I don't have any pictures though, since Lu was still napping when I finished the bag. 

Even though my outer fabric is thick, my bag is pretty floppy.  I don't think this is really a problem for my bag since mine is going to hang off the foot board of Lu's bed.  If you want your bag to stand up more you could use interfacing to add strength to it. Happy sewing! 

I'll see you all back here next week.