Library Tote Bags- and a new Silhouette Promotion!
I LOVE my Silhouette! And I love it even more now that it can cut fabric!
I was graciously provided with some of Silhouette's fabric interfacing and a fabric blade to try out (along with a new cutting mat- woo-hoo!). Let me tell you, I'm thrilled at the possibilities this opens up for me!
Silhouette is offering a great deal on these supplies, which I'll go over at the end of my post.
I chose to use my supplies to personalize some new Library Tote Bags for my kids.
I was inspired by these tote bags my sister-in-law made, which were in turn inspired by this skirt. I did NOT sew my own tote bags, though you certainly could. I just bought some ready-made ones from the craft store. I'll start off with my son's bag first.
I wanted his to have a little pocket, because little boys always have something they want to carry with them. Now he can put it in there, along with his library card, so I don't have to throw it in my purse. So, I sewed a little pocket out of camo fabric by ironing under the sides of a fabric rectangle and sewing it on the bag.
I cut the letters using my Silhouette. I used the sewable interfacing for this bag, which has a lighter adhesive. I knew I would need to sew his letters on after ironing them, since he is hard on everything!
Following the directions that came with the interfacing, I ironed the interfacing onto the back side of my fabric,
positioned the fabric on my cutting mat, making sure to avoid the rollers,as you can see from my design in Studio
then cut the letters "READ".
I went with the default setting for cotton fabric with interfacing. The top of the letters cut beautifully clean, but the bottom had quite a few places where the fabric didn't quite separate. I went over it with an Xacto knife, but you can tell a difference if you look closely. I knew I just needed to adjust my settings but I was being lazy and didn't want to re-cut the fabric.
Once my letters were cut, I ironed them on to the tote bag. Then I stitched over the center of the letters, since they were really too thin to do a full zig zag stitch all the way around.
It's perfect for my son!
Now, on to my daughter's tote bag. I pretty much followed the same steps, except I used the Clean-Cut interfacing, which is not meant for sewing machines.
I adjusted my settings, and the fabric rectangles came out perfectly clean this time. For this bag, it was just a matter of figuring out the placement of the "books". A strip of fabric along the bottom finishes everything up nicely.
I love how they turned out, and my kids are thrilled to have new book bags. Their old ones have been loved and used to death!
