PJ cuff drawstring bag
Super simple drawstring bag - great for packing shoes in your suitcase, or project bags for your knitting or crochet project, or any little thing a drawstring bag is handy for.
Equipment
- 1 Seam ripper
- 1 Scissors or rotary cutter and cutting mat
- straight pins
- needle and thread or sewing machin
- 1 5-6mm Crochet hook or prepare to use the safety pin threading trick
Ingredients
- 1 pair PJ trousers bound for the rag bag with sewn cuffs
- 1 T shirt or pair of leggings bound for same or 2 pairs of shoe strings
Instructions
The bag bit of the bag
- Iron the PJ trousers from the bottom up, about 18-20 inches up the legs.
- Measure the desired length of your bag, add about ¾ of an inch and cut - I measured against another bag I use, and found that about 15" makes a great length for shoes to go in a suitcase.
- You could just pin and sew across this newly cut open seam as is, but I chose to fold it down a slim margin - ⅜ of an inch, and pin
- Sew along the pinned seam to close up your new bag. I did a zig zag stitch, mostly because I had just done a cleaning and maintenance on my machine and I wanted to make sure everything was running well, but it is my go-to for a lot of projects, it has a little stretch to it, and I think it's generally a good choice, here I think it will combat fraying damage and along with the fold, give the bag a sturdier bottom seam. A standard, straightline, running stitch would work fine.
- Working on the open edge - find the vertical seams in the cuffs. There should be two - the inner seam and... well, the outer one... Using a seam riper or fine scissors, open these up only working below the hem, so that you don't split your bag, the point here is just to open the tube created by the cuffs. Depending on how the PJs were sewn, you may find that once you rip through the outer most seams, there's a second seam inside to get through.
Drawstrings
- Now you just need strings, I like a double drawstring. Folded in half, mine are about 2 inches longer than the bag is wide - here's how I did it:
- Cut ¾ inch strips from a t-shirt, mine was a men's medium, the loop measured 21 inches from seam to seam - so 42 inch circumference loop. I folded the shirt in 3rds and cut through the 6 layers of fabric in one go with my rotary cutter.
- Pull the strips to stretch them and curl the edges in on themselves, mine pulled out to about 26 inches long (52 inch circumference loop).
- Cut each seam, leaving you with 2 jersey knit "strings".
- Tie a slip knot in one end of one of the strips, thread a crochet hook through one side of the newly opened up drawstring tube, grab the loop of the slip knot and draw it through.If you don't have a crochet hook, you can tie a knot in the end and attach a large safety pin, you can then inch the safety pin along through the tube. Fish the safety pin and knot as far into the tube as you can, then, holding it in one hand through the fabric, bunch the tube up on the pin, then take the end of the pin in your other hand and pull the bunched fabric over it. Its hard to explain but a bit of a classic move. The crochet hook is quicker and less fiddly.
- Release the loop and thread the crochet hook through the other tube (from the other side, working towards the end with the loop in it), grab the slip knot, draw it through, and tie the ends together, I just used a simple overhand knot.
- If doing a double drawstring (c'mon you know you want to, it's a fancy bit of engineering and this has been an incredibly easy project) repeat those last two steps starting from the other side of the bag- this way you end up with a knot on each side. Having the knots on different sides isn't required, it just gives a nicer finish.