A Place for All Those Little Pieces

Don’t you wish every toy came with a carrying case? I finally had enough and decided to make my own.

At Atti’s birthday party a couple of months ago, he got a bunch of really cool presents that have been sitting stacked in their boxes in the corner of the room ever since. We’d pull them out to play with them, and then I’d put everything back in the giant cardboard box so that the little pieces didn’t end up lost under couches, or mixed up with other toys, or, and this is the most likely, swiped by kitties looking for something to bat around.

But those cardboard boxes were just not cute, and started to discourage us from even playing with the toys at all. It was time to come up with a way to keep things together, that didn’t involve making my house look like the stockroom of a Toys R Us. These little linen sacks are cute to look at, and are the simplest things to make, ever.

Fold a piece of fabric in half and cut so that it’s big enough to fit all the little pieces you want to put inside it. Be generous here, better too big than too small.

I drew a little image to identify what was going to be in the bag, and cut it out of another fabric. Clip art is another great resource for this. Iron it onto fusible web, and then iron it in place on what will become the front of the bag.

The fusible web gets it good and stuck, so it’s tempting to stop there, but it will eventually peel up if you don’t secure the edges somehow. For this bag I used a glitter fabric glue since it was absolutely the easiest thing ever.

I also tried treating it as a regular applique and doing a zig zag stitch around it, but my machine hated the cheap fabric I was using so I gave up after one attempt. But long term readers know how obsessed I am with applique, so if I wasn’t making this on a bad allergy/low patience day, I totally would have gone this route.

The super cheap fabric I was using was a fraying nightmare, so I made sure to zig zag all four sides. Then sew the sides up to make your bag shape.

Since I was going for easy as possible, I made a really simple drawstring closure. Fold the top in towards the center about 3/4″ and sew down, leaving a gap open at each side.

Then thread a ribbon through the casing and tie a knot to secure it.

I remember my dad getting so mad at my sisters and me for how messy our room was, and going through our toybox unearthing lost treasures I’d been looking for for ages. This way, maybe those pieces have a fighting chance of staying together. Now Atti can just look at the front of the bag to see what toys go where, we pull the string and toss the bag in the toybox, and then it’s all ready to be played with the next time.