completed project: a laundry bag

Last January, I bought “Little Stitches for Little Ones”, a book full of sewing patterns (for baby items) by Amy Butler. A few weeks after buying the book, I knew I wanted to make the Cheeky Monkey laundry bag.

I bought the fabric a few months later, and started cutting the pattern out in October, with hopes that I’d have it completed by the time I returned from maternity leave. Things were a little slow going, and while I did start sewing the pieces, I didn’t complete it until today.

In December (December 11, to be exact), I had most of the bag completed. I took this photo – I was pretty excited.

If you look at her pattern, you’ll notice that I immediately cut my pieces out backwards. The body/head should be on the other corner. The bottom left-hand corner is the velcro for the head.

I ended up getting the drawstrings taken care of that night (I did things a little out of order, based on how much time I really had juggling work/the house/baby/wife duties), and then I let it sit another 6ish weeks.

This morning I finally finished the monkey head. I thought the embroidery part would be the toughest. It was actually sewing the 3-inch opening in the bottom of the monkey’s head.

If you were to see mine in person, you’d be able to see the imperfections. I’ve seen pictures online that other people have sewn. I’m just not that great yet.

The completed project:

Well, it’s almost complete. I love that this bag has drawstrings – and an opening in the front! I don’t like that you have to hang it by the drawstrings, making it very long. So I am going to add a small loop to the back of the bag so I may hang it on a lower hook in the baby’s closet.

And maybe I haven’t mentioned that since we brought the baby home in September, we’ve been using gift bags to hold his dirty laundry. We like to think that we’re reusing/recycling by using them. We have a ton. But now we get to hand off the rest of our gift bags to someone else, and start using a real (and very cute) laundry bag!