Simple Hobo Drawstring Backpack

I’m going to be making at least 60 of these bags for a women’s event in March. I wanted to be sure my concept size would be appropriate for holding a full sized folder, Bible, water bottle and a few personal items before I made all of them so I  whipped up just one. Luckily, my prototype was perfect!

In a nutshell, I cut a long rectangle 13X36 inches. I folded the rectangle right sides together and pressed down 1/2 inch on the 13″ sides.

Then I folded it again 1 inch and pressed again. Repeated for the other 13″ side.

Now, the top part will be the casing for straps so if I was using a t-shirt I could leave the edges raw. However, this is woven cotton. So I unfolded my presses and pressed in 1/4 inch on each casing end then redid my folds so that the raw edge was hidden in the casings.

Next I stitched the casings in place. Then I stitched together the upper bag sides with my regular machine. I switched over to my serger at this point and finished the sides. After turning right side out, I stitched two dime sized circles on the bottom corners through both layers of fabric.  This was stay stitching for where I threaded through the straps in the last step. Alternately an eyelet could be used but that would raise the cost and not look as “hobo” as I wanted.  I used a seam ripper inside the circle to create a 1/4 inch gash. Then I cut two strips from cotton jersey, 2″ X 60″ each. T-shirts could have been recycled for this at a slightly lower cost but yardage was more convenient for making so many bags. Jersey doesn’t have to be finished and it very comfortable for weight bearing straps. Using a safety pin, I threaded one strap through one side of the casing and all the way around and out at the same side it was inserted. I did the same with the other strap on the other side. The last step was to pull the strap ends through the backpack gashes and tie knots to secure. Strap length is easily adjusted by trying on the backpack and pulling the straps to cinch. Then just retie the knots higher and trim the excess.

I will try to add pictures for these steps as I work on more bags in the next few weeks.

Festive Birthday Pennants and Birthday Cakes 2011

I try to make a new birthday decoration every year for my kids to go with the birthday theme for that year. This year, my son’s theme was trains(again!).
My son says the ticking reminds him of a conductor’s hat so that’s why I went with that. It looks kinda mariner to me when it’s by itself but it went well with his train items.
His birthday cake turned out soooo good and I spent less than an hour of total time on it. I made a 13X9 hot milk sponge cake and used giant train cookie cutters(thrift store for $.50) to make train shapes. Then I topped the cutouts with warmed peanut butter, firmed that up in the freezer, then covered the shapes with Wilton chocolate melts. I put the confetti on while the chocolate was still wet. I used the last bit of canned icing I had in the freezer to decorate this in 5 minutes. It’s not perfect or terribly fancy but I’m out of practice and I knew he’d love it anyway!

My daughter’s theme this year was Cars 2.

I actually bought a shaped cake pan for the first time since my daughter is just crazy about Lightening McQueen. I used a homemade chocolate cake recipe and had no trouble with getting it out of the pan(well, I did but I knew that was because the cake hadn’t cooled enough so I waited and it came out the next try without damage). I couldn’t find the special icing dyes for McQueen anywhere and I wasn’t too excited with the idea of all that coloring anyway. I’m extremely sensitive to coloring. I accidentally licked my finger while decorating with the colored icing and my tongue swelled up. :/ And that’s why I only have a set of colors in the house for making homemade playdough. So I came up with the idea of icing the cake in almost all white and using red colored sugar to get color without as much dye. The wheels and outlining are melted chocolate.

I was really tired when I decorated this since we’d been celebrating birthdays for about 60 hours at that point, plus entertaining out of state relatives. I was muttering under my breath during the hour of messing with icing about never again decorating such a complicated cake. It just wasn’t turning out as well as I wanted it to and I was getting upset. Then something happened that totally saved the day. We lost power just as I was about to serve the cake. So we lit a bunch of candles and proceeded with the cake. The cake magically looked 10X better in the low light! And the birthday girl loved it.