The Lined Drawstring Bag Sew Along is coming back for it's seventh year! Using drawstring bags to wrap your gifts is a great way to reduce the amount of single-use wrapping paper you need. Every year is an opportunity to build up your stash of bags and use up some of the beautiful fabrics you probably have kicking around in your fabric stash! Within our immediate family, we keep reusing the same bags year after year. I love pulling out my older bags and adding new ones to the mix. I hope you'll sew along with me and make a few bags this year!


New for this year, I have put together a selection of bag kits! I have been wanting to do kits for a while, but wasn't keen on purchasing large quantities of prints. Instead, all the fabrics in these kits are thrifted, so there is a limited quantity of each. Kits contain three fat quarters, four yards of cotton twill tape, four wooden beads and two safety pins. The kit could easily be used along with either the free tutorial or the original pattern to make the Everything size bag.

When:
The Lined Drawstring Bag Sew Along will officially kick off on Wednesday, November 25th and will run for four weeks!

Where:
Each week of the sew along I'll publish a blog post with a new tutorial or informational post. Here is the dedicated sew along page, which I'll update as we sew along. It's a great place to find all the posts from previous year's sew alongs. There is so much good information and inspiration there, be sure to check it out.

How to Participate:
As always, this sew along is casual and no-stress. Make one bag or twenty! Participating is easy, we'll be using Instagram to share our progress. Please tag me @jenib320, I love sharing your projects throughout the sew along! Not on Instagram? That's okay! Please sew along with us and if you'd like, share your bags with me via email! (jenib320 at gmail.com)

Patterns & Tutorial:


Sew from the free tutorial, the pattern or the expansion pattern! Both patterns are 20% off today through 11/24/26. Prices are already marked down.

Shop Patterns:
Lined Drawstring Bag Pattern
Lined Drawstring Bag Expansion Pattern

Shop Kits + Notions:

Limited Edition Lined Drawstring Bag Holiday Kits

The shop is stocked with cotton twill tapes, nylon paracord and wooden beads to make finishing your bags a breeze!


Lined Drawstring Bag Notions Kit
Cotton Twill Tape
Nylon Paracord
Round Wooden Beads
Beehive Wooden Beads

Thank you for your continued support. Can't wait to sew bags together!

Happy Sewing!

DIY Mesh Thread Zipper Pouch

One of my favorite things to do is upcycle, especially in my sewing projects. I've made many things from vintage sheets, tablecloths, napkins and towels. Recently I have been pushing a step further to try using materials that would otherwise be considered trash. One of those I'm going to share today, along with a little how-to of how I did it.


When I process vintage sheets to use them as fabric, I break them down by ripping them into strips. This ripping results in a lot of long loose threads. They're quite colorful, so I found myself saving them in a little jar on my sewing table. I just couldn't throw them out!


Finally when I had enough of them I decided to combine the thread with a deconstructed mesh drawstring bag to create a "fabric" to work with. Yardage of mesh would have worked too, but I had these drawstring bags on hand from my seed saving.


I started with a flat piece of mesh fabric. On half of the mesh I arranged the threads in and even layer.


Next I folded the other half of the mesh on top of the threads, creating a thread sandwich with mesh on either side.


I quilted all three layers together to secure the threads. This resulted in a solid fabric that I could use to make something!


I decided to make a zipper pouch. I cut two pieces from the quilted fabric I'd made as well as two lining pieces.


Voila! A fun little pouch made from trash!


There are so many other things you could put between the mesh layers to make a new fabric. A few ideas: fabric scraps, yarn scraps, embroidery floss. You could also stitch around things to contain it in the fabric like beads, sequins or confetti.


Happy Making!

Finished: Night Sky Quilt

I am so happy to share this finished quilt today! This one took me 10 years to make, start to finish.


It all started with a few lovely things that were given to me! First, the fabrics are from Morning Walk by Leah Duncan which she designed for Art Gallery when I was designing there too. And secondly, the ruler I used to make this quilt. I met Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts at one of the first quilt markets I attended and she gave me one of her Sidekick rulers. I picked up one of her quilt patterns that utilizes it, Night Sky.


I'll be honest, this type of piecing is not typically my cup of tea! I also don't make a lot of quilts that require templates for cutting. The process of making this quilt top reminded me a lot of making my Tula Pink Kaleidoscope Quilt. No part of it was particularly difficult, it just required me to be a bit more organized with all the pieces and do more precise piecing.


This quilt languished in my works in progress storage for many years without being worked on. Finally in 2025 I decided I needed to either finish it or pass it on! I still loved the fabrics so I pushed forward and got the top put together. I ended up arranging the blocks using equilateral triangles of the background fabric rather than with sashing like the pattern instructs. I really wanted to finish this quilt and I knew this layout would help me get over the finish line.


Ta-da! I need to work on a better lit spot to do flat shots, but for now this will have to do. I am so happy that it is done! And my husband claimed it right away so it's staying here! It's been our sunroom quilt all summer.


The quilting was done by Katie of Autumn Moon Quilting. The design is called Moon Phases.


For the binding I decided to use the background color from the top! And I remembered to add one of my labels.


I am so glad I held onto this backing for all these years. I picked it up from a store closing. It's a print from Morning Walk too.


Pattern: Night Sky by Jaybird Quilts
Fabrics: Morning Walk by Leah Duncan, Sweet Mint Pure Solids by Art Gallery Fabrics.
Notions: Sidekick Ruler

Happy Quilting!

Ice-Dyed Sheet Set

We have been ice dyeing pretty regularly lately and one my of favorite things I dyed this Summer is a set of sheets! I love the work of Anna Joyce and her hand dyed duvet covers are stunning. We don't use a duvet, so instead I decided to dye myself some sheets.



I started with a simple white 100% cotton sheet set. For now I only dyed the fitted sheet and the two pillowcases. I will probably dye the flat sheet at some point and cut it up to use as fabric for a project. I did everything I usually do when ice dyeing (dharma trading tutorial), but I did try to be light handed with the dye so that there would be some undyed areas.


I am absolutely thrilled with how it turned out! There are so many cool bits and colors.


This was such a fun project for me. I love the mystery and magic of ice dyeing and it's always interesting to see how a project will turn out! I definitely want to branch out in the type of items that I dye and will absolutely be dyeing another set of sheets someday!

Happy Making!