laundry bag tutorial

You’ll have to pardon my horrible pictures for this project, but I wanted to share it with you anyway because it has been very handy for me.

I bought a metal laundry rack thingy at a garage sale. It came with fabric that fit across and had 3 dividing sections to put dirty laundry. I washed it and used it for a year, even though it was ripping and continued to rip as we stuffed dirty clothes in.

So I decided to sew separate laundry bags. Then instead of transferring the contents of one of the sections to a basket each week to haul to the laundry room, I can just untie it and carry it down.

here’s a basic tutorial on what I did.  You have to measure the size of the bag you want to know how big to cut your sections.  (my hubby did it for me and told me the wrong size for the first two, which is why they are a bit shorter.)

Here are my pieces, I have one bottom piece which is 9×13, and then two of each side. Two that are 9 x 29 and two that are 13×29.

You will then sew each piece to the side it matches like in the picture above. Once that is done, you will connect each side and sew to the top.  If you want, you can hem the top before sewing the pieces together.

On the first bag I hemmed the top edge after my sides were sewn, but I found it easier to do it before they were sewn on the second bag.  You just want to make sure that you measure each so they are still the same length. If you fold it over a 1/4 or 1/2 inch and then iron, then fold over another 1/4 or 1/2 inch and iron you will have a good edge:

Then sew. I did two stitches around because I like how it looks, but it is completely up to you.

For the ties, you will want to cut some small strips the length of the fabric or about the same length as the bag.  I did the same with hemming, I folded them over about 1/2 inch, then folded them over again 1/2 inch and sewed the strips.

When you are sewing up the side of each bag (or you can add it afterward) you will want to fold each strip in half and stick that in the seam.

I sewed 1/4 inch seams since that’s what I’m used to with quilting, but you can do it as you want. Just be sure to add that into the measurements that you want.

It will look like this when you sew the seam.

Done! You can tell I need to do some laundry since some of the bags are more stuffed then others :) Good thing it’s laundry day tomorrow! 

 

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