Drawstring Bag and Printing on Fabric Tutorial

Once again, I had to take advantage of Lynne's talent, over at A Simpler Time.  She posted a tutorial for a floral hanging sack.  I put a different little spin on it.  I printed right onto the fabric and sewed it up the same way I make my ditty bags.  Here is the finished product.  Then I'll do my best to walk you through it step by step.

Your going to need light weight fabric, I used muslin, freezer paper and an image to print out.  Freezer paper is shiny on one side.  Wax paper will not work with this.  I downloaded the image off of Lynne's blog(with her permission, of course) and saved it to my computer.    Then I cut a piece of muslin and a piece of freezer paper, the same size as a sheet of printer paper. 8.5"x11".  That's the largest size my printer will allow. *If you want to age your fabric, I would do it before this next step.  I think the ink will run once it gets wet*  Next, your going to lay the freezer paper down, shiny side up, and place your fabric, right side up, on top of it.  Flip it over and run your iron over the paper side of the freezer paper.  Basically, your heating it up so that the shiny side will stick to your fabric.  Make sure you get the edges well.  Here is what it will look like.

Here is a close up where you can see the two layers.

 Now, it's on to the computer.  Place the fabric/freezer paper into the printer and print your image out.  Make sure you have your fabric turned the right way to ensure the image will be printed on the fabric side and not the paper side.  I did a test print on normal paper first, just to be sure my image was the right size.

I love how that image looks on the muslin!

 Once the image is printed, you have to remove the freezer paper.  Just find a corner and pull it off.   It comes off very easily.

Now it's time to sew. ~WARNING~ I have had no formal teachings in sewing, so this is not going to be politically correct.  So for all the real sewers, I apologize ahead of time. LOL  I cut out another piece of muslin, the same size and place wrong sides together.  Then I stitched up one side.

Time for the drawstring.  I know this isn't the right way to do this, but it's the easiest way I have came up with.  Open up the two pieces (which is now one) and lay a piece of twine across the the length of the top.  Fold the fabric over the twine and pin it down.

Then stitch straight across.  Fold it back up, and stitch around the remaining two sides.  When I got to the top, I didn't sew across the twine.  I turned the fabric and finished just below the twine.  Ya, I know, hard to understand.  Here's an illustration.

I clipped the corners so it will lay flat when you turn it right side out.

Turn it right side out and I stuffed mine with fiber fill.  The draw strings should pull easily.  I hope that wasn't too painful to read through. If it was, I'm sorry.  LOL