Screen Bags

 So, over the summer, we repaired some screen windows and I grabbed the window screen mesh leftovers and stashed them away for potential future projects.

After the dubious outcome of the purse project in the previous post, I decided it would be a good time to make some simple zip bags with that mesh

but of course my ideas got away from me and I also made a small tote bag in a style I'd never made before (at least, I don't think I've made a bag with straps like this before)

I'll start with the tote bag, made with the window screen, a sea jelly print outdoor fabric that a friend made a jacket from and gave me the remnants (thanks, Cosmo!) and some twill tape that I think was originally  tied around a set of washcloths.  Oh, and, a zipper that had obviously been salvaged from something else and had the stops on both ends cut off.  Perfect for this project, though.

I sewed the fabric to the mesh on both sides, then sewed both sides to the zipper (double top stitching for all), then worked out the strap placement.  I  pinned the straps roughly on the first side, then folded that side in half and repositioned one strap to match up with the other, with another set of pins marking where I would stop the stitching..  I edge stitched (not very accurately) up to those pins, stitched across, then back down, going back to sew in the Xes at the tops.

Then I laid the other side against the first side and lined up the twill tape with the sewn straps and repeated the sewing process.

When I sewed the bottoms together, I got this

...which, yeah, doesn't show it very well, but, trust me, the straps align nicely.  (If not for the zipper, I would have sewn the bottom seam first, then laid the twice-as-long twill tape across/stitched both sides at once.)

Then I sewed the side seams, serged only the jelly print seams, then sewed and serged the box corners, which I had cut out before sewing.

 I think this will be a good size to put a few dolls inside to take out into the yard for photos when the weather gets warmer (something I didn't do much of last year...)

Now, eh zip bags, of course, I made with no idea what I'd do with them, but that's never kept me from making zip bags before.

All of the contrast fabric came from the enormous destash of the relative's things that a friend gave me in 2019 (thanks again, Nata!) and I'm pretty sure they're all Ikea fabrics, too.

This once came from a bit of yardage

while the rest came from scraps that weren't much larger than what ended up in the bag--most of their surface area was reduced when I squared up the edges by pulling and snipping along threads

(some top stitching is better than others)

I serged the edges of the fabric on these before I sewed anything

They all seem to flare out at the bottom, and I suspect that's because I was a bit too enthusiastic with pushing the corners out (I used the flat head screwdriver that came with my serger.)

And then there's this one, which I decided I didn't like the way the proportions would look if I added mesh, so I made it as a regular lined zip pouch

which I like unreasonably more than I expected.  I like the color combination (you can see the pink on the other side in the first photo of this post and below), I like the heft of the fabric, I like how well the zipper (which I think was something Susan gave me, thanks again to Susan) matches, I like that it coordinated with the 1/8 yard strip of printed lining polyester that PhantasmCreations gave me (thanks!)

and I also really like how this print looks like "alien" art from the original Star Trek (which I know was actually a fairly common "look" for not-necessarily-alien art in the late 1960s/early 1970s, but whoooo did the set designers for Star Trek run with it...even more so, if I remember correctly, in the animated series.)

I did take a picture of how I finished the lining opening that had been left to turn everything right-side-out, just because I mention it often

 Sometimes, yes, I can be bothered to slip stitch a lining closed properly, but, more often...it's like this.

And then I looked at the scraps left from evening up the sizes of the various panels and thought maybe I could make some doll-size bags.

One was considerably more successful than the other.

Zip bags go together fast, and the window screen added a new element of texture and fun (sorry, that sounds kinda corporate, doesn't it) so all of these together made for a quick, enjoyable project.

And I do still have a little bit of window screen mesh left...