Vintage tree bag

This little bag is project number 4 and uses the T L deep dish tree die. I’ve used free motion embroidery to attach the cotton trees to faux leather.

This is how it looks:

Project 4- applique bag

Apart from the tree die, this is what you will need:

To begin using the die I cut 4 trees from cotton fabric- two contrasting patterns.

Next I took the bag frame and made a template from card to help cut the bag fabric.

I then cut two from pink faux leather (bag outer) , two from green cotton (bag inner/lining) and two fusible fleece.

I sprayed the fleece with adhesive for fabric (you could iron it on too) and stuck to the bag outers.

I lined up my die cuts having sprayed them too on the outside front.

Next I attached them to the fabric using freemotion embroidery. I tried to emphasise the shape of the trees.

I then placed adhesive stones to the trees and ironed to heat set.It would be more difficult to do this after the bag was put together.

To put the bag together I put the two outers right sides together and sewed around the bottom with a 1/4 inch seem allowance up to the hinch part. ( where the shape changes). I repeated this with the inners but left an unsewn space to allow for the bag to be turned right side out later. I trimmed excess around the curves with pinking shears.

When this was done I took the two parts opened them and placed inner and outer right sides together, pinning at the matched hinch seem. This creates two rectangular flaps.

I then sewed up each flap with the same seem allowance being careful to keep the hinch seems lined up. After sewing I removed excess material particularly around the curves with pinking shears.

Next I turned right way out and poked out all the corners.

Each rectangular flap was carefully stuck into the frame, one side at a time using fabric glue.