Variations on the pillowcase theme:
A PAIR OF SHOE BAGS, for packing your shoes in your suitcase without getting your other stuff dirty.
Almost any fabric will do; I used a piece of old cotton-duck curtain from which I had made other travel accessories. (Matching travel accessories made from a LOUD print are a great help in collecting your stuff when leaving a hotel room.) (And when you leave your pillow in a motel, wearing a shirt that matches the pillowcase is a convenience when you come back for it.) (I had a *lot* of that cotton duck.)
Cut two thread-straight rectangles 15" x 14", (38 cm x 36 cm), plus allowance for seams and hem.
Sew the 14" sides together in a very narrow mock-fell seam. If you have a selvage available, use that as a finish for the mock-fell; otherwise, zig-zag over the raw edge instead of topstitching.
Hem the mouth of the bag. Turning under an inch and zig-zagging over the raw edge will do.
Turn the bag inside out, flatten it with the seam running down the middle of one side, stitch across the raw end. Turn right side out. Insert one shoe in each bag.
(The students will, of course, have to adjust the dimensions for foot size and shoe style -- and the size and shape of the available scraps..)
FOLD-OVER PURSE
This is a simple bag closed by folding it in half; suitable only for very small bags such as coin purses.
To make: cut or tear a rectangle twice as long and wide as the desired finished size, plus allowance for seams and (if needed) finishing the mouth. Fold in half, sew two sides. Put stuff in, fold in half the other way.
I unvented this one morning when I was getting dressed and couldn't bear to put my spectacularly-shabby little zippered coin purse of stuff (nail clippers, half comb, sewing kit, etc.) into the pocket of my nice dress, so I hastily cut a rectangle from a scrap of the dress and sewed it on two sides, no mouth finish at all. Since the fabric is interlock, that purse is still going strong, alternating with one torn from muslin the morning it was too dirty to put into my pocket. (The muslin purse is two pieces torn to finished width and twice the working length to make fringe all around.) (Or, more likely, because I found two little scraps before finding one big one.)
A hem is too bulky for a tiny bag; if you can't leave the fabric raw, cut the side that will be the mouth with an overlocker. For an even flatter finish, draw two threads out of the fabric and zig-zag with one side of the zigs falling into the gap before cutting along the drawn threads. For a slightly fancier finish, draw a third thread a quarter inch from the first two, cut there, and ravel out a fringe.
Seam allowances inside the bag are a nuisance. I made the interlock bag by zig-zagging over the raw edges, which made a very narrow ridge inside the bag. Since the torn edges of muslin are semi-ornamental, I simply sewed two rectangles wrong sides together and left the seam allowances on the outside. Similar ideas: french seams begun with the right sides together so that they end up outside the bag; ornamental overlocking, binding.
VARIATIONS ON FOLD-OVER BAG
For a large bag, make one side less than twice the finished size, so that you have a flap. The fold-over makes this more secure than the standard envelope bag, and it can be made to look like an envelope bag. Since it won't be stuffed into a pocket, you'll need Velcro, ties, buttons, or something. The flap can be trimmed into a point to allow the use of only one tie, button, or whatever. Since fasteners will be attached to it, the flap must be hemmed, faced, or lined. The short side of the mouth will also benefit from some stiffening.
And writing this has made me realize that my wallet is this same exact pattern, except that it has a lot of seam-to-seam pockets added, the flap is folded up into a pocket, and the wallet is folded in thirds instead of halves. If I ever get around to writing up how to make this one, I'll try to sell the write-up to Threads.
My wallet was inspired by a Caradice wallet, but all the design features it retains are approximate size and shape and the idea of closing a pocket by folding it, so I'm safe on copyright grounds -- size and shape is determined by the standard checkbook, so I'd used
*that* long before buying the Caradice wallet. And folding in thirds, but mine has the flap folded inside and Caradice folded theirs outside. (This was a mistake that turned out to be a design feature.)
(And if one of you'ns writes it up first, that's fine -- my ideas are as uncopyrightable as Caradice's; it's the work of writing the pattern that you get paid for.)
Joy Beeson