SEWING PROJECTS - Organiser bag I made this organiser bag for my friend’s birthday. I love the mixture of pretty and practical. It’s meant to hang on the back of a door and be filled with all those bits and bobs that are usually floating round the house. Or maybe fill it with pens, staplers and rulers and create your own mobile office!

SEWING PROJECTS - Organiser bag-pen-pockets-sewingYou don’t need a pattern for it. Just cut out a matching front and back, 2 sides and a bottom in a heavy weight fabric – a furnishing fabric would work really well. I have used a heavy weight wool felt combined with a cotton check, but off-cuts from an previous project would be ideal.

The big thing about this project is to remember it is essential to sew all you pockets BEFORE you sew the bag together. To make your pockets, cut out some strips of different heights and lay them out on the bag front. phone-pocket-sewingHem them, sew them on and oversew at intervals to create the different size pockets.

Try measuring various devices (you phone? pens? lipsalve?) so that you are sure that your pockets will be really useful. You could try some little extras like a zip pocket. I found a really nice zip pull in my stash which gives it a lovely posh feel. Cut the old one off with wire cutters and the new one just clips on. You can buy them online lots of places but I use ……Another useful little thing is a strip of fabric on a popper (see picture) to keep keys or rings on.

pocket-sewing

Once you have completely finished all your pockets and gadget holders, you can assemble the bag. I did it with the raw edges facing outward rather than inwards as you would normally do -  then finished the raw edges with bias binding.zip-pull-sewing

There are lots of version of this type of storage bag. Have a look on my Pinterest page at Sew you own Bags for more variations and inspiration.