A Pillow that turns into a Bag

Welcome to SewVeryEasy, my name is Laura and this fabulous bundle of glow-in-the-dark Halloween fabric made me think of this. What I did come up with is a pillow that turns into a bag. So when you're not using the bag, you can use it as a pillow. And when you're not using it as a pillow, you can use it as a bag. And all we're going to need to make this is three fat quarters. And it's going to make a bag and pillow about 17 and a half inch. This fabric is called Glow-A-Ween and it's from Benartex and it glows in the dark. Spider webs, stars, skeletons, cats, pumpkins, houses, and of course, we can't forget our ghosts. This is fun fabric just on its own. But when you turn the lights off, it glows in the dark. So there's lots to choose from. I need to only choose three fat quarters. So since this pillow is going to be also a trick-or-treat bag, I'm going to have some haunted houses. The no haunted house is complete without some cats and some monsters. Those are my three fabrics. So now we just need to press these fabrics. Once they're pressed, I am going to lay those three fat quarters together. So we're going to have somewhere around 18 inches by 22 inches. I do want to make sure all of the fabrics are going in the same direction. And that will be important if there's directional fabric. And what I want to do is take the fat quarters and make as big of a square as I can out of the three of them. I was able to cut all three of these pieces at 17 and 3 quarters of an inch. Doesn't matter the size. We just need them square. Once we have our three squares, we're going to take one square and put it aside. And we're going to be able to make the handles from these leftover strips. I'm going to take one aside and work on these two pieces. I'm going to take two pieces and cut them into a two and a half inch strip. So match them, sew their right sides together, and stitch a quarter inch down that long edge and then turn them right side out. Once these are turned right side out and pressed, do a row of stitching down each side. Trim those two handles so that they're both 14 inches and put those aside. We have one more strip of fabric and it needs to match the same size as this square. And we're going to need to divide this in half. If you do have a selvedge, be sure to take a little bit of that edge off. I like to take off at least a quarter of an inch and now I'm going to cut that in half. Take those two little strips and fold them and press them in half so that the wrong sides are touching and we get to see the good side. And put those aside. Take one piece and fold it in half. I'm going to be folding it that way and I need to press that in half. We now have everything that we need to make this bag pillow. So I'm going to take those two and place them together. And I have the other side of the pillow that's a solid piece. Match up the raw edges at the top. This will be the bottom of the bag so I need to put handles up here. Both sides are going to be treated the same. We need to find that center and measure over 2 inches from that center. So we're going to have a 4-inch space. So I have my center and it's over 2 inches. Take the handle and we're going to place it on the outside of that 2-inch pin. And keep this straight. We're going to pin it on the other side of that 2-inch pin. So we're maintaining that 4 inches. I like to put two pins and that way it doesn't twist. We need to pin the handle on that second piece. So I have the handle on that solid side up at the top. I have the handle on that two-piece side so I have the fabric folding so all of the raw edges are up at the top and the handle has been placed over top. Take those little strips of fabric that we pressed and line up that top. And pin all of those layers together on that one side. And do the same to the second and stitch a quarter inch. This area where the handles are, I did stitch over this two or three times. That's just going to make that handle stronger. We're going to do a little bit of pressing. We want to press all of the seam allowance so it's facing down. And that way that handle is going to sit up. So we're going to have that little flange and it's sticking up but the seam allowances are going down. Same for this one. The flange is sticking up, the handle's coming up, but when we turn it around the seam allowance is going down. We are almost done. We have the handles on the bag, the front of the bag, and the back of the bag, and the back of the pillow. Place these right sides together. Everything is smooth. With that flange facing up, we're going to stitch down, around, and all the way over. And we're going to stitch that a quarter inch. If you'd like, you can just do a row of zigzag all the way around to finish those edges. Or if you have a serger, you can serge those three edges. Once we have finished those sides, we're going to take that little flange and fold it over. We want the handles to come out right from that seam. And we're going to be able to do a row of topstitching and stitch that little flange down all the way around. Once that little flange has been topstitched down, we're done! So we can turn this right side out. So when we take a look at the bag, we have one side that is that solid piece of fabric, and the other side has that little flap. This now can be used as a bag. That flap is what's going to turn this bag into a pillow. So we're going to be able to stick a pillow form inside. So I have that pillow inside of that bag. We're going to take this top flap and just fold it over to the other side and poke out that little corner. And we now have a pillow. So I have the front of the pillow, the back of the pillow, and to turn it into a bag, I'm just going to take that flap, pull it over. That exposes my handles and I now have a bag. So it's a pillow and or a bag. Thank you for joining me today on SewVeryEasy. Feel free to subscribe. I'm on Facebook, Instagram, and I do have a newsletter. It's all free under SewVeryEasy. Thanks again. Bye for now.