Party Bags for a sophisticated hen do

Well June went by in a blur of deadlines and finishing frenzies.

And, because it just had to be done, I also got involved in the preparations for a friends Hen Party.

First of all there were party bags to make.

We had ordered some labels from Vistaprint (a customised stock design) for some of the party bag goodies and I took the label design and reproduced it onto treated cotton fabric from Crafty Computer Paper by just running it through my colour printer.

Backed onto bondaweb, these were then stuck onto the front of the bag and finished with a decorative blanket stitch on the machine.

Then I did a toile for the bags to check my proportions.

The bag was basically two rectangles -8 x 10 1/2 inches - with a bucket bottom (is that the correct wording?) created by cutting 1 1/2 inch squares off the two bottom corners and then, bringing the bottom and side seams together, stitching along the straight line that created. (does that make sense?  Should I do a tutorial?)

Then I stitched.  

And, because I decided in a moment of perfection to line the bags, I had to make 24 of these little fabric buckets (there were 12 bags in total).

It's probably worth noting at this point that one of the ladies in the office was chucking out a bag of remnants a few weeks ago, and chucked them in my direction.  In the bag was some vintage Laura Ashley and some lovely cream furnishing fabrics which rather dictated the vintage theme for the bags. I contributed a couple of pieces of cream and pink fabric from my own stash, though in fact I don't really have much traditional patchwork fabric - it's not really my thing. 

And here is one of the finished bags with the little 8 inch ribbon handles attached when the inner and outer bags were joined together at the top seam.

And for the record the goodies which we popped into the bags. (the labels were used on the lids of the lip gloss and on little glass jars which we filled with dolly mixtures.  It really was pretty.)

Elsewhere, a colleague and I determined that the thing this party really needed was bunting! So we bunted - again using fabric from the bag of scraps donated by our work colleague.  In the end our production line was so effective we ended up with over 16 meters of bunting. 

Now the hen do was actually on a beautiful edwardian style boat at Oxford (we're talking classy ladies!) so I also got out my collection of vintage table clothes gave them a jolly good iron and, well as you can see for yourself, the effect was perfect! 

Oh - and the sun shone!