A simple drawstring bag

Yesterday I went into the sewing room to make up a small and simple drawstring bag to giftwrap a pair of socks - what I enjoy about mixing up crafts is being able to present something "made" in something I also "made"! the whole thing becomes a gift - hurrah!
It was nice being back in my newly tidied and decluttered sewing room but I found out one or two things : a/ its NICE to have all your scissors and rotary cutters in their own zippered pouches but not very practical! and b/ its all very well slashing your stash by more than half but then are left with not much CHOICE! I found myself wishing I'd not got rid of all those small pieces of quilty cotton for about 5mins and then I stuck in and made myself find something with what I did have!
Part of my "problem" I have to accept is that I have got plenty of fabrics, trims and the like BUT I quite like to just have them! not use them! necessarily.  get me? so in keeping my "favourites" filling up my boxes it doesn't leave me with much left to play with - either I've got to be brave about it and USE it or I've got to buy more stuff and as I'm on a strict budget for the foreseeable future, I decided to make use of what I could stretch out to create a useful drawstring styled bag.
In the end I went for a nice green and if I'd been thinking properly instead of jumping straight in, I could have matching drawstring ties too - unfortunately I got so excited at thinking I had enough fabric I forgot that the length needed to be doubled to go back AND forth in order to "draw up" and I couldn't be bothered to unpick and attempt to fashion a bodged job thus I used some nice narrow gosgrain ribbon!  which turned out to be complementary to the label I attached!
In the end my little something to gift wrap the actual gift - pair of socks! became more of a gift worth keeping and took ages to make up what with the test embroidering of the label - I had planned to write "hand knit socks" but no.1.son declared this a bit naff.  I embroidered "hand knit" but this got a sigh and a tut so did a "hand made" which got the thumbs up ..

The next thing I encountered was FINDING my instruction book for the emb machine and the overlocker - TIDYING up is all well and good if you can remember where you put things.  I spent 20mins searching everywhere for my overlocker threads!   I distinctly remembered clearing out a good 1/3 and dumping them resolving to keep only the basic black, grey, navy, cream and brown reels and the three woolly nylons but WHERE did I put them??  In the end just as was wishing I'd not started I found them! hurrah!  Slight panic as I opened up the horn cabinet and set the overlocker on the table and feared I'd forgotten how to thread up! my overlocker is a nice basic brother 925 model which has never (fingers crossed!) let me down and I achieved a perfectly balanced 3-thread stitch with just a minor adjustment to one tension dial and hurrah the fabric was overlocked in minutes.

Just a simple project but its inspired me to look at making more bags soon.

I enjoyed making the little label too and spent a couple of hours reaquainting myself with my lovely little Brother PE150 embroidery machine and made these:

I do like little bags and while I can and indeed do make them (from time to time!) I often use cosmetic bags to keep knitterly stuff in like sock needles, these are the two latest bags from recent Clinique "promotions" that I have to hand:

FINALLY all that searching through my boxes and cupboards at last I found my pack of felting needles! I thought they were lost! and now all I've got to do is give it a go ..