Textured Ruffle Bag Tutorial

This is my Textured Ruffle Bag! It is my project for the third week’s challenge for Project Quilting. It started as a way to use up extra binding pieces. Yes, extra binding leftover from every quilt under the sun. My texture inspiration is couture fashion. Go to Pinterest and type in “couture ruffle dress” – I’m tellin ya, all sorts of things come up. Some designs are elegant & fantastic, while others are rockin a big bag of NOPE. I decided I needed some ruffles in my life on a much smaller scale.

I save my binding in rolls, but only recently realized that I might have enough binding saved to have my own jelly roll quilt race! Seriously. That is a bit too much saved binding.

I picked out a couple of my favorite pieces. These measure 2-1/4″ wide, but really anything from 2″ – 3″ will work.

Then I opened them and ironed them flat.

Next, I folded them in half, wrong sides together. Right about now I was thinking- well, I surely should have skipped the ironing step. Crazy. Anywho. I stitched along the length with a 1/4″ seam allowance, using my Seamingly Accurate as a guide.

Press the seam allowances to one side, centered on the back of the strip/tube.

Yep. Ok. I have two tubes: one really long one and one about half that size.

Stitch a long basting stitch down the center of each strip.

Pull the bobbin thread gently to gather up each strip into a ruffle. Do this for both strips, even though, turns out, I only took a photo of this blue strip.

Find a batting scrap or fat quarter to make a quilt sandwich. My quilt sandwich is slightly larger than 9″ x 12″.

Pin across the whole project to hold the layers securely.

Now, watch this cool trick: Trim one side square with a quilting ruler.

Pin the center ruffle roughly 4″ from the cut edge. Pin at the top only.

Use the Seamingly Accurate Seam Guide to stitch the ruffle 4″ from the cut edge. Stitch down the center of the ruffle with a straight stitch. Simply align the cut edge with the solid black line marked 4″. As long as the ruffle is under the needle, it will be 4″ from the edge. No need to measure and pin all the way down the project.

Trim off excess ruffle.

Cut the longer ruffle in half, and apply it 3″ from the cut edge. Again, super easy to do with the Seamingly Accurate.

And apply the last ruffle 5″ from the cut edge.

Add extra quilting lines through the quilt sandwich on the right and left sides of the ruffles. Trim the piece to 9″ x 12″.

I found a zipper as long as the shortest sides of my project, but I didn’t want zipper tape caught in the edges/side of the design. I knew I’d be stitching these side seams and turning the bag right-side out, so having the tape in the narrow seam allowance would be too bulky. I modified the zipper by cutting off excess tape, zigzag or tack-stitching over the teeth and adding a small rectangle of fabric. See below:

Press the fabric over the tape. Before applying the zipper, audition the bag in a folded state to see if one side may be too long for your taste. I ended up cutting off about an 1″ from the “non-ruffled” short end of the project.

Place the right side of the zipper on the right side of the project’s short side. Apply using a 1/4″ seam allowance, straight stitch, and zipper foot. Repeat for the second side.

At this point, I’ve made a tube.

Turn the tube right side out to determine how the ruffles will fall on the finished bag. If you are feeling industrious, edge-stitch along the zipper to hold the seam allowances in place. I skipped this step since the bag is pretty small.

Turn the bag wrong side out. Open the zipper. Align the folds again. Use a 1/4″ seam allowance to stitch the right and left sides.

Ok. Turn it right side out through the open zipper. Push the corners out gently.

And since the bag was made from a quilt sandwich, the inside looks lined and quilted.

Making a complete quilting-based project in one week is what Project Quilting is all about. I’m tryin to keep up! Thanks for hosting, Kim & Trisha.