Homemade and thifty kids' gifts

When I found a bucket of 7 little brain games at a thrift store for a buck, I originally planned to give the whole bucket to one of my boys for Christmas. Since they were unused, I decided instead to make each its own drawstring bag. I'll now give them as holiday grab bag or birthday gifts.

But what fabric would be good to use? Suede, in the form of a few pairs of pants my sister rescued from a former employer. Who was going to throw them away!!! They look brand new but I'm never going to wear them.


All I did was measure up 8" up from the cuff and sewed along my cutline to make the bottom of the bag. I cut a thin strip from the bottom of the pants leg to use as a drawstring and threaded it through a small hole cut near the top of the bag.


I then added a vintage jingle bell to the drawstring and there we have it.

I had a problem continuing cutting up the legs for subsequent bags. I planned on using the seams as the sides of the bag but they ended up being too wide to close completely with the drawstring.


Instead, I made a few more bags by cutting out rectangles of suede and sewing up 3 sides. Worked even better than the original way. Too narrow to machine sew a pocket at the top for the drawstring so I put in a basting stitch by hand.

They ended up being too small for the remaining games, so I'll be spending today taking apart the brown pair of pants. (BTW, at first I was going to line the bags, but they didn't need it.)