Posted on 7 Comments

All I need is a destination

Drawstring travel pouches

I’ve had this nice, striped, heavy cotton valence sitting here for a month or so. I picked it up for a few dollars at a thrift shop, with no real plan in mind for it.  Tonight it became four handy travel pouches – three with drawstrings and one with a button closure.

Small travel jewelry pouch

This little pouch is for earrings or pendants.  It has one of my clay buttons on the front, and at the top, a hair elastic is sewn in.  When the top of the pouch is folded over, the elastic loops over the button and holds the whole thing closed.  I’ve seen designs like this before, but I didn’t know how to do it. I pretty-much just flew by the seat of my pants, and got lucky!

Tall drawstring travel pouch Three travel pouches

The other pouches feature ribbon drawstrings, and are in three different sizes: a really tall one for any bigger bottles I might want to take on the road with me, a short wide one for smaller toiletries, and a decent sized one for lingerie.  I used the instructions for the “Ditty Bag” in Sew What Bags to figure out how to do these.  I love that the “buttonhole” for the drawstring is made without actually having to make a true buttonhole – real buttonholes are not something I’ve been able to wrap my brain (or my sewing machine) around just yet.

Travel pouches

Pretty cool, eh?  One striped valence = four easy (and addicting!) little bags to help organize me when I travel.  All I need now is somewhere to go…

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Posted on 7 Comments

7 thoughts on “All I need is a destination

  1. Makes me want to make some and travel, too.
    .-= See Marty’s latest blog post: First Day =-.

    1. They’re pretty addicting – I don’t even feel the need to use them. I just want to make more and more!

  2. Those look really nice! I like the tags you added to them, too. I haven’t come to terms with the buttonhole maker on my sewing machine either.
    .-= See Tanya’s latest blog post: Fuzzy-wuzzy season =-.

    1. My buttonhole maker and I just don’t see eye to eye. There’s always a mess of mangled thread in the end.

  3. New blog post: All I need is a destination http://bit.ly/UJHg3

  4. Super cute! Buttonholes on the machine are actually ridiculously easy. I was intimidated too, until I put the foot on and tried one on a scrap. And then I realized, oh. No big deal. 😉

    1. I think I’m buttonhole-impaired. I can’t even get the foot on properly. I found out how to do a work-around version that has been ok for me when I’ve needed it, but one of these days I’m going to tackle that machine!

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