hi i’m jenny from the missouri star quiltcompany. take a look at these bags behind me. last year when sarah was at market shewas walking around carrying a big bag. you know the bag is almost as big as she is, buteverybody wanted know how she made it and you know how to make it themselves and sowe’re going to do a bag tutorial for you. now we’ve already done the three, threebags out of one charm pack and this is three big bags out of one jelly roll.so to make this bag what you’re going to need is twelve strips. two and half inch stripsand out of one jelly roll you’re going to get three bags. you’re also going to needa half a yard or a yard and a half of lining fabric, for the handles, the pocket and thelining and you’re going to need a about
a yard of batting. and this can be a scrapyou know, i, i don’t think you can buy, well i don’t know if you can buy a yardor not, but it’s just a, i used a scrap from the bottom of, of another quilt.so the first thing you’re going to do is open up your jelly roll and you’re goingto choose twelve strips that you love that go together that you want on your bag. you’regoing to put those strips right sides together like this and you’re just going to sew downone side of them, quarter of an inch, iron them open and you’re just going to keepadding them together to make a set of twelve. so i have a set over here that i’ve sewntogether, right here. and by the way the fabric we’re using here is the “civil war jubileeâ€fabric by barbara brackman from moda and the
ones that are up on the wall, these are madewith “tula pinks acacia†fabric. i just wanted to show you two different styles. these,i mean they’re just beautiful bags. so here you can see i’ve sewn twelve stripstogether and pressed them all nice and flat and now we need to quilt them. now the machinequilting on this is super easy and it’s really left up to personal preference whatyou like to do. i’m linear so i like lines and i like things to follow. so you’re goingto take your batting and you’re, you’re going to leave it a little bit bigger andyou can see i have a pretty good size piece here and i’m going to lay this so it comesfairly close to one edge, like this. and fairly close to a top and then what i’m going todo is just kind of trim off this bottom edge
a little bit, because i don’t want a tonof extra when i’m, when i’m quilting. and basically i’m going to anchor one sideand just start sewing long seams down here. long rows of stitching down here just to anchorthe quilt. it doesn’t matter how far apart they are. how close they are. none of thatreally matters. it doesn’t matter if you go cross ways or you want to cross hatch itor you want to go in straight lines. that is left totally up to you. what we’re tryingto do is give the bag some body. so what i’m going to do. the other thingis, is that on, on a smaller, you know on smaller pieces like this you don’t reallyhave to anchor it terribly. you know you just, what i’m going to do is i’m going to sewone seam down along the edge and anchor my
pieces to my batting and then i’m just goingto kind of smooth as i go along. if you’re a little uncomfortable with that you can putsome pins in it. you can also use some basting spray and stick it on. i’m just always ina hurry to you know get things done so i like to do it.so now that i have my piece flat and smooth on my batting, i just going to take this overto the sewing machine and i am just going to sew straight down one side like this andyou just kind of let it rip. so i’m just sewing right along the edge. i’m lettingmy presser foot be my guide and i’m just making sure that it’s generally on there.we’re attaching it and i just let this go. sew it down. and because you’re going fromone side to the other, it will eliminate any
puckers or, you know folds or anything likethat, because you’re just going to go from one side to the other.so now i’m going to pull this out like this and i’m just going to slide it right backforward and do it again. now, now how close you want to do this is entirely up to you.i’m going to like eyeball about a half an inch. you can run yours right next to it ifyou want. i’m just going to eyeball about a half an inch, because every time you getto a seam line over here it’s going to straighten you back up again. so even if you get a littleoff it’s not going to really show. so now you can see i’m still eyeballingabout a half and inch over here and the next seam i take is going to be right at the seamso it just kind of straightens you up. you
can put as many rows in there as you want.i’m going to end up with one two three four sew lines per strip, but really whatever youwant to do. it’s really just to give it some texture and some body. so i’m goingto go ahead and keep sewing these and i’ll meet you back here.so now i’ve got all my rows sewn together and see it just gives it a little bit of oomph.a lit bit of you know, body to it and i want you to take a good look at my seams, becausethey’re not perfect. you know they’re not completely straight. they’re not alwaysright on the seam, you know they’re just, it’s just not going to matter. when youlook at these purses it’s not the exact quilting you look at and you’ll see in thisone i’m about a half an inch apart on these.
maybe three quarters or an inch and this oneover here is just quarter inch intervals. they, we use the presser foot just at thevery next seam align. so it’s just, it’s kind of whatever look you want and how muchsewing you want to do. so the next thing we’re going to do is trimthis up and we’re just going to use our ruler and our rotary cuter and we’re goingto cut right along the edge of our strip here and this is just going to clean it up, becausethis piece, this fabric piece is going to become the pattern for your lining. and ilike to save these little pieces here that are about an inch, because they’ll, that’swhat’s going to go in my handles. so i’m going to flip this around and do the otherside. these big bags are so handy. if you
added a few more strips on it, you could evenuse it to hold your, your cutting mat and your ironing board when you go quilting. youknow it’d make a great quilting bag and it’s all from stuff we just have, you know,so it’s not like we’re. i’m sure all of us have a few two and half inch stripsin our stash, haha, i sure know i do. alright on these end pieces right here i’mgoing to trim this off also, but i’m going to come in about a quarter of an inch fromthe furthest selvedge, because they’re not going to end up exact. so i want to make surei don’t get any selvedges in there. so i can use my ruler to line up on my strips andmake sure that i’m pretty straight across and then i’m just going to trim this offright here. make sure i’m still straight
across. there’s a lot of things you justkind of, when you’re dealing with a bag this big it gets a little bit big for your,your cutting boards. so you can always fold in half or you know that kind of thing tomake it more manageable depending upon the size of your table and all that. i kind ofuse my lines on my ruler to make sure that i’m fairly lined up, fairly square i guessi should say. and that looks pretty good. so let me just get rid of these over here.and look how nice and clean this is now. you know it’s all cleaned up. you can see here’sthe back where we’ve sewn through the, the batting and i mean it just looks great.so now this is our pattern for our lining and we want to cut that before we go any furtherand this is, this is just some fabric and
again you’re just going to need a yard andhalf of this and it’ll take care of everything. you’ll have enough for everything. and youshould be able to get your lining right out of, by folding your bag in half you’ll getthe exact amount that you need over here. you’ll be able to just lay your ruler downand give that a cut. now, because, because the bag doesn’t have any seems in it yetwe don’t need to allow for any seams. we’re just going to go ahead and figure out howwide our bag is and then we’re going to trim our lining so that we have our lining.and then i’m going to go ahead and cut the selvedge off the top of this so that i don’tby accident get, get them stuck in the side of my bag. and you can see what i’m doinghere is i just folded this over so that it
makes it a little more manageable for my ruler.i’m making sure everything’s lined up. then i’m just going to come across hereand trim my selvedges off like that. and this should now be the exact same size as yourbag. so we’re going to set that apart or asideover there and then we need to cut our handle strips. the handle strips are four inchesand you’re going to need four of them and i’ve already cut mine over here, right here.and you’re also going to need a one inch strip of batting to go inside your handles.the other thing you’re going to need from this piece right here is you’re going toneed your pocket. so i like to, depending upon the size of the pocket you want, i’mgoing to take this and cut this at the fold,
because every pocket measurement is different.you can see i have a tall one here and it’s set up on the bottom. over here i have a shorterone and it’s actually set into the bottom seam. so it’s, you know again it’s, it’syou can play this and have a little fun with this.so i’m going to cut this at the fold, right here. and i like a double pocket so what i’mgoing to do is i’m going to fold my pocket like this and i think probably i’ll layit on the bag to see exactly how wide i want it and i don’t want it quite that wide.so i think that will be wide enough, i’m just going to cut about two inches off ofthis piece. this will make my bag, i mean my pocket, oh fourteen by twenty. and so i’mjust going to trim this off right here. you
can put different pockets. these bags havedifferent pockets on either side. you can see they’re, they’re different. you cando whatever you want, i’m going to do the same. so i’m going to fold this one andtrim it to fourteen also. so now we’re just down to the assembly.so the first thing we’re going to do is make our handles and our handles, i like tosew, i like a two strip handle, because i want to be able to make it as long as i wantto. and, so i sew my ends together, my selvedges together like this. and i going to come rightover here and do that. make sure my, my, make sure i don’t have any selvedge showing andi think i do have a little bit on this other side so i’ll take a little bit deeper seam.then i’m going to trim that off and head
back over here to the iron. so i’m justtrimming this extra fabric off. and then this is how i do my handles and youknow i try to do everything the easiest way possible. so we’ll just, we’ll just lookat it and see. i’m going to scoot this over a little bit. move this out of the way. andthen when i iron my handles what i do is i iron a quarter of an inch side on one side.so i’m just going to iron this whole thing like this and just keep sliding this down.k, now i’m getting close to the end of this ironing and the reason i’m folding one sidedown is, because for me this is the easiest way to do this.then what you’re going to do is you’re going to cut some one inch strips of battingor a little bit shorter, little bit smaller
than one inch i think and i have a piece righthere. and i’m just going to lay my ruler on here, batting is kind of a bunch of fluff.this also does not have to be an exact science, because we’re just going to eyeball it andgive us some strips that are just about, about an inch. we’re not worry about how, youknow how exact they are. and then what i do and i want you to get agood look at this, because this is how i put my handles together. what i do is i lay mybatting down the center of the strip like this. i fold the piece with the raw edge overand the piece i’ve ironed under i’m going to fold over the other side like that. sothen i’m just going to go along and stitch down this, this seam right here and stitchit closed and i just take the whole thing
over here and i just run it through my, mypresser foot like this and i put my, my needle right on the, close to the edge as i can getit and i just keep folding this over and running this down. just like this. and when i getto the end of my batting strip, you know i don’t worry about piecing them togetherwhen i get to the end. i just slide another piece in there.these do make a super long handle so you need to judge that on your side. i’m taller soi can take a longer handle, but you know if sarah tried to carry my bag as tall as i am,you know she’s a lot shorter than i am. so it’d be dragging on the ground. so youjust need to make sure your handles fit you and it’s in a comfortable spot, which you’llbe able to do that as we, as we put them together
you’ll be able to see how, how that’sgoing to work. k i just slipped another piece of batting in there so i could keep goingalong and i just kind of lay one, one over the other as i’m sewing. i just then foldit over and just keep sewing. so now i’ve finished sewing the first seamon my strip and i’m going to add two more and this is just to give it strength and bodyand i use my presser foot and i line up my presser foot with the edge and sew anothertwo more seams. so i’m going to three total across this, because when we attach the handlewe’ll be sewing right along the edge. so i just use my, the edge of my presser footas a guide on this one. on both sides of that center seam. ok so now i’m finishing upthe other side of my handle and i’m just
finished going down this other side and ifyou get it lined up right, you really can just push on the presser foot and let it go.so now my handle is done and when you flip it over this is the side of the handle that’son the outside. so you can see, you know it has a real nice clean look to it. just straightstitching sewed down. easy as pie. alright, now let’s get to some of this assembly.get rid of some of these extra things i don’t need. oh i’ve got them all here my pockets,my, my handles. alright, so now this bag right here you, takea look at these behind me. this one i have my strips running sideways. this one they’rerunning up and down. either way i like to cut across the bottom of my bag, so that,so that i have a seam there to stick my handles
in and you don’t have to do that i just,that’s just kind of how i like to do it. so i’m going to iron a little seam on hereso i know where to make my cut and then i’m just going to go ahead and cut straight downthis. it’s just a little bit bigger than my ruler and then i’m going to have twohalves. make sure nothings under here, haha, don’t, don’t, don’t want to cut my strapin half. there we go. alright here we are. little bit more. there we go. ok, so now wehave two halves. so once you’ve got your bag cut in halfthen you’re ready to put your straps on and your pocket. so i’m going to go aheadand trim off the end of these straps. like this so they’re nice and straight and i’mgoing to get my pocket ready to go on. now
i don’t have to worry at all about theseside seams, cause they’re going to go under the pocket, but i do have to worry about thisseam here. so i’m going to take this and sew this on the sewing machine closed. soit’s going to make a little bit of a tube. and then i’m just going to turn it rightside out. so we’re going to turn this right side outlike this and then i’m going to press it nice and flat so it’ll lay. so here wherethis fold is we’re going to press that and we’re just going to press it straight upon the top. we want a nice flat pocket. alright, so now you’re going to positionyour pocket where you want it and as you make a lot of these you’ll, you’ll developa system. you know it’ll start, you’ll,
you’ll be like “oh i like it thereâ€you know, i know that this bottom is going to curve over, under a little bit. so i’mgoing to come up about four or five inches from the bottom and i’m going to lay mybag on there and then i’m going to lay my strap on there. my strap is going to hangoff about an inch and i’m going to follow it all the way up here to make sure that it’sstraight. now the edge of your pocket gives you a really good idea where to lay your straptoo. it gives you a good place to pin and this is a, this is a place you want to pin.make sure when you use this strap, because for most of you the strap is going to be toolong. you know it’s going to be a little bit too long. so i’m actually going to shortenthis myself. and, and take a little bit off
so that’s it a little bit more fitted forme, cause you don’t want your bag to drag on the ground, haha, and this strap couldbe long enough to drag on the ground. so then we’re going to pin this. make surethis, we’re going to pin where the pocket is so we make sure that we’re holding everythingdown. like this. i want to pin up here again. and then i’m going to put a pin up hereat the top, because i want to be sure that i’m going to stop about an inch from thetop, because i’ve got, i want to, i’m going to need some seam room up here wheni put my, my lining in. go ahead and pin this side over here. pin my pocket side. therewe go. and i’m using my jelly roll strips as a guide to keep my handle straight andi have a little extra handle over here. so
i’m just going to trim that off. give meabout an inch extra like that and then we’re going to sew this down right along the edgeof the strip. ok, so i’m at the sewing machine and we’rejust going to sew right along the edge of this and i just watch it through the, throughmy presser foot to make sure that i’m staying right along the edge. and i ease my pins out as i go alongand then i’m going to stop just before this pin up here and i’m going to go slide thisdown and sew the other side. and that should catch your pocket completely. there we go.and you’re going to do the same thing to all the other side as well and the other sideof the bag. so i’m going to go ahead and finish this up and i’ll meet you right backhere.
ok, so i’m back here. i’ve got my pocketsewn on, my pocket sewn shut, my straps sewn on and i’ve got two identical sides. nowwhat we’re going to do is we’re going to lay them right sides together and we’regoing to sew the bottom shut and i’m going to go ahead and put a couple of pins in here.anchor this down and then we’re going to sew up the sides as well. sew straight acrossthe bottom and straight down the sides. so let’s head over to the sewing machine anddo that. alright, so here we go along the bottom. i’mgiving this about a half an inch seam allowance and i’m going to sew right over my strapsright here and a little bit of a backstitch. there we go. alright, so i’ve got my sidesand my bottoms done and now i’m going to
trim off my extra handles right here. that’sa hunk of handle right there. trim off that and i’m going to take my pins out, whichthey’re sometimes a little hard to find in this batting. but i want to make sure they’reout or i will forget them and they will be sewn into my lining, haha, and i will be,oh my goodness pocking myself. alright, now we are almost ready for our bag.the only thing we have to do now is square the bottom. i like a bag that sits and squaringa bottom is super easy. so let me just show you how that, how that works. i’m just clippinga few extra threads. so you’re going to reach on either side of your bag like thisand you’re going to pull that apart. now however, and then you’re going to line,you’re going to line your side seam in with
your bottom seam and sometimes it helps tostick your hand in there. here let me get this stuff out of the way so you can likereally see this. so i am, i have my hand in there and i’m pushing it apart and i’mfeeling for these two seams to line up. now however far in you go that’s double, your,your bottom is going to be double that width. so if i’m measuring two inches like this,which this is just about two inches and i have those two seams lined up, the bottomseam and the side seam. like this. then you’re, you’re, you’re going tosew two inches out from either side. so let me make sure this feels right to me in there,you have to make sure nothing gets caught in these handles. and, and that feels goodso this is going to give me a bottom about
this wide and i think that’s pretty good.and if you want you can take a ruler and you can just draw a line across there so you havea sew line on and that’s pretty handy sometimes. i have a, well i have a little pencil heresomewhere. let me see. a pencil, a pencil, here it is. here we go. i know i had one theresomewhere. so we’re just going to draw a line acrosshere and that will give me just something to aim for and we’re going to do it on bothsides of this thing. so my hand is back inside and i am, let me clip off this thread righthere and i am pushing those, that, pushing the seams out to make it wide. i’m goingto run the side seam and the bottom seam different directions and i’m going to come in andyou can actually measure this. you can say
i want it to be four inches so i’m goingto come in two. so there’s our two i mark right there and then i’m going to flattenthis out a little bit like this. lay my ruler across there and draw the line and there aremany more effective pencils than a ball point pen, haha. so you might look at that.now what we’re going to do is sew straight across this and i’m going to backstitchthis as well, because i want this to stay in. make sure you remove your pin. and backstitch.you know the only reason we don’t backstitch in quilting is, because everything is enclosedin another seam so we don’t need to. but in every other kind of sewing, we backstitch.alright, so here we are on this one. i did the manual backstitch on that, haha, i’lldo the real backstitch on this. there we go,
haha, sometimes i just get in a hurry.alright, now you can trim this off, but i would highly suggest flipping your bag rightside out and looking to make sure it is the right width before you trim it off, becauseyou can’t glue that back once it’s gone. so that looks like a pretty good width. seehow the bag is, it’s got a good, a good sit, a good straight down side and we’vematched up our, everything, everything just has laid together very nicely. so now i’mjust going to open this up and i’m going to, i’m going to go ahead and trim off thisbottom piece right here and i’ll show you how i’m doing that. right here. just becareful and don’t cut your bag and then i’m going to trim my other side. there wego. make sure my seams are out of the way
and i’m only cutting one thing here.alright, now we have our outside of our bag completely done and we only have to do thelining. remember our lining is, is made just like our purse, but we don’t have any ofthe handles or anything like that and we have a fold on the bottom. so all we’re goingto do is we’re going to put his right sides together and we are going to sew right downthe sides and then just pull our bottom piece out to make our bottom and that’s we haveto do to this lining piece. so let’s sew the sides. make sure your top pieces lineup. cause your sometimes the fold isn’t always at the, in the right spot.alright, now on this other side we’re going to leave a little opening. so i’m goingto sew up about hm maybe about ten inches
and then i’m going to lift up my needleand i’m just going to move it up here a few inches, cause we need a hole to turn ourbag through. making sure everything is still lined up.so what i’ve done is i sewed my side seams and then i just boxed the corners by measuringup two inches, drawing my line across and sewing it and then sewing across it and trimmingit off so now the lining will fit perfectly into the bag.alright, so now we’re ready to put our purse together. the main body of the purse is goingto be inside out and our lining is going to be right side out. so i’m just going toslide this down in here and slide the two together and so they should go together sothey’re right sides together like this.
then i’m going to take my side seams onmy lining and line them up with the side seams on the bag. they should fit pretty snugglyand be you know, both fit together. and i’m going to put a pin on here on the side. likethis. on both sides so one over here as well. line up my side seams. the next thing i’mgoing to do is make sure my handles are tucked down. we do not want to get this handles inthis. so we’re going to tuck those down. make sure they are not up where we are sewing.so what i’m actually going to do is i’m just going to fold this handle down, but i’mgoing to put a, a pin on that lining where it’s going to hit so that i know that handleisn’t going to sneak up in there and get into my seam.alright, now let’s go over to the sewing
machine and sew this down. now if one of yourpieces is a little different than the other one, you can just take in that side seam justa little bit so that it fits. that’s the easiest way to do that. alright, what we’regoing to do is we’re going to just sew, of about a half inch, quarter inch seam alonghere. alright, i’m just about to the end of this seam and it’s completely enclosedand i’m going to backstitch on that a little. and then we’re going to turn it throughthe side. so this is where that opening we left on thesides comes in. i’m going to pull my lining out, find my opening, and then i’m goingto pull the whole bag through that opening. so it’s going to be a little bit of workand you’re going to have to be careful,
we don’t want to rip that opening too big.whoop, i just pulled a few stitches. it’s coming, it’s coming. i put my hand in there.make sure my corners are boxed out on both pieces. like that and like that and then i’mgoing to fold this lining, push this lining down inside the bag.so you can see right here. it’s all getting pushed down inside there. now actually beforewe get it completely in there we need to sew up this side seam. so what i do is i takea hold of these ends right here and i pull them out and i’m going to iron those twodown so it makes a little seam like this. you can do this by hand, but i like to justpress it so it lays together real nice. and then i’m just going to top stitch alongthe top of this, this one. this is a real
easy way to do it. it’s not the most finishedlooking, but it works for me, haha. alright, so here we go, over here and i’mjust going to sew these two pieces together now that i have my bag all turned and i’mgoing to go right along the edge. we want to make this as nice looking as possible.and there we are up where the seams starts and our bag is closed up. and you just geta little seam like this, i’ll show you, hang on. there we go. you just get a littleseam like this and works really well. so then we’re just pushing it back downinto the bag and we’ve got one more thing to do before we’re done and i like to topstitch the top of this bag so it lays nice and flat. so i’m going to, i got to getsticky fingers. i’m going to roll this down
like this and make sure it lays. and righthere where my handles are, i’m going to pin that right there. so i’m going to pinthat handle up, because i’m going to sew right across the top of that handle. justlike this on all four handles. and if you pin in those four places, pretty much theother parts will lay down pretty good and you’ll be able to just zoom around thistop and finish this up. cause it’s starting to get pretty exciting, we almost have a bag.a finished bag. one of three that we can make with this jelly roll, haha.alright, so here we go and i’m going to sew on the top, top stitching. i’m goingto start at the side seam. so my starting and ending point will be hidden on the sideand not in the front of my bag. i’m going
to line my presser foot up with the edge ofthe bag. cause i just want about a quarter of an inch seam. and then i’m just goingto go right across this handle. just like this. then i’m going to make sure this partof the bag is laying down. and then i like to go around one more time when i’m doneand do it right along the top edge. so we’re just going to go ahead and sew all the wayaround this. look at this, hallelujah, ha, the bag is done.i added one more little row of top stitching on the very top edge of this seam right hereyou can see it. and it’s done. look how cute this is. look at that. awesome. thisis a great size. i’m going to florida next week. i think i could put my flip flops andmy beach towel in here. anyway, we hope you
enjoyed this tutorial on the big bag fromthe missouri star quilt company.