Barnsley Blog Bags: 2020 - March 5th - Throwback Thursday 2008

Thursday, 5 March 2020

2020 - March 5th - Throwback Thursday 2008

Each week / month, I will try and re-post a blog post and see what I was doing with One Project A Month and making handmade items, as these are old post, any links are still in place
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Back in 2008 I started making Morsbags, that's where the name Barnsley Blog Bags came from. At the time we lived in Barnsley, I wrote a blog and made bags, but then we moved and then five years ago moved back to Barnsley so I started using the name again when I started making items from pre-loved fabrics.

this is the blog post I wrote back in July 2008...

.....the postman has just been and finally the two magazines I've just won on eBay have arrived.
Popular Patchwork & Sewing World , May 2008 both RRP £3.75 and I bought them for just 99p each.

Anyway I started reading Sewing World, I always look at the letters page first and there was a letter about Morsbagging , I'd never heard of it but it sounded interesting , making bags from leftover fabric so I did a search in google and found their website http://www.morsbags.com/

this is their official blurb to use on blogs
......let’s do something positive to reduce the hideous number of plastic bags being used - 1 million are consumed per minute globally - of which hundreds of thousands end up in the oceans.

the idea is to get together with people in your local community, drink wine and make reusable cloth bags (from old duvet covers, curtains from charity shops etc) and hand them out to the unsuspecting public for free on specified dates outside different supermarkets.

meet new people, do something marvellous for the planet and beat other pods (groups) of baggers with your morsbag tally. go to http://www.morsbags.com/ to be a part of a wonderful thing! and its non-commercial/ non-profitable

quite simply you make a bag using leftover material and save the planet from 80 carrier bags , well I'm sure we all have a fabric stash we can recycle. There are patterns and instructions you can download, it looks a really interesting website. There is more information on two other websites as well

www.brother.co.uk/recycleabag
http://www.isew.co.uk/ - also supports the project as well

.....so I'm off to rummage through my fabric stash and see what I can find to make my first bag!

update:

well I've made a start, I've cut out the bag from this fabric, can you remember I bought it from a visit to Natalie's shop in Filey

http://sykesssillysite.blogspot.com/2008/04/life-stuff-and-day-out.html

and it looks great so far, so I just need to finish it! (not sure I will give this first bag away though, then I've got an excuse to make another one and another and another.......!)

well, I've made the next part of the bag and so far so good, the instructions are easy to follow....

and it's finished! ( see pic above) .....except this is inside out, but the seam looks better this way, according to the instructions its supposed to be a French Seam but I've never done this type of stitch before, anyway the photo below is the bag the "right" way around and you can see the seam sticking out, all raggy, is a French Seam supposed to be like that? But overall , I think I've done very well considering this is the first one.........