Sewing tutorial: an eco friendly bag with a Rooster

Sewing tutorial: an eco-friendly bag with a Rooster

This is another one of the tutorials presented at the Mlyn exhibition in Minsk. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to sew an eco-friendly bag with a reverse appliqué (Rooster). And not just a simple appliqué, but a quilted one, too.

Sewing a Rooster eco bag. Materials:

• Unbleached linen fabric
• For the bag: 2 pieces, 30 x 35 cm each
• For the handles: 2 pieces, 7 x 60 cm each (or 1 piece, 7 x120 cm)
• For the lining: 2 pieces of calico, 32 x 30 cm plus 1 piece, 18 x 18 cm – for the pocket
• Colored strips of fabric 24 cm long for the appliqué (the width may vary: 2.5 or 3 or 3.5 cm)
• Sewing threads, erasable pen, zigzag scissors.

Sewing a Rooster eco-friendly bag. The working process:

For the decoration, we’ll be using a raw edge reverse appliqué. You can use any outline drawing of a rooster size 20 x 20 cm. Print it and cut out the pattern.

Stitch the strips of fabric together to make a quilt: one after the other, alternating between different colors, until you get a piece 24 x 24 cm in size.

Place the front part of your bag on top of the quilt and secure it with pins.

Trace the design onto the fabric with an erasable pen. Make sure that the design isn’t bigger than the quilted area. Sew along the outline with a decorative stitch.

Using your zigzag scissors, make a hole in the outlined area and cut it close to the outline.

Use the resulting piece to create your eco-bag.

Original text by Olga Milovanova