A Quick and Dirty Remnant Treat Bag

I had a couple of pieces of orange rip-stop nylon that I’d gotten from Joann’s remnant bin. I like to grab up orange and blue remnants because I may be able to make a cute gator project. But this particular remnant became the prototype of a project the young women (ages 12 – 18) in our congregation chose for a Halloween service project.

testing load bearing capabilities

Every year we have a “Trunk or Treat” party in the church parking lot, in which the kids, dressed in their Halloween costumes, trick-or-treat from trunk to trunk. For some kids, this is it for the Halloween festivities. Their parents don’t want them to go out into the crazy world trick-or-treating where they might get poisoned candy, razor blades in apples, or whatever the local perps have in store for the kids.

The Young Women usually help out greatly with “Trunk or Treat,” making it a popular and fun night. They decided making treat bags for the kids would be a worthwhile service project. I looked for some easy patterns. Summer at artful life gave me a great plink to make a fat quarter bag courtesy of Diary of a Quilter. I love it, and it’s very couture-ious, but I can’t see repeating all those details forty or fifty times in one night…so I came up with this quick and dirty version. [It's not really dirty; my drafting teacher in college said "quick and dirty" all the time and it became an excuse for anything you acknowledged as not perfect]

Cut a yard of fabric (which is folded in half like it just got cut off the bolt) into 4 equal pieces (actually it is 8 equal pieces: for 4 bags per yard, you cut the fabric folded double into 4 pieces). I cut along the fold, too, although you don’t have to because you’re going to sew a U-shaped seam around 3 sides of the square. Then serge around the U just at the outside of the seam. Fold the top (the only one of the 4 sides that’s not seamed) down and then again so that the raw edge is underneath (about an inch altogether).

For the handles, cut 2 15-inch lengths of ribbon. Start sewing 4 inches from the side seam: place an end of the ribbon, pattern side of it facing the right side or outside of the bag. I used a triple-zig-zag stitch and kept sewing all along the folded-down edge of the top, adding the other end of the ribbon 4 inches before the opposite side seam. I applied the other ribbon handle the same way. Next, turn the bag right-side out and apply decorative stickers. An addition of reflective tape would be nice, but I couldn’t find that at Joann’s or Michael’s–why not?

Treat bag

It held up well with a bag of potatoes in it, so it ought to be ok for candy. Not the most couture-ious of all the Pinterest bags, but not the cheapest either! I planned to get the fabric at 40% off, but it was already on sale for $1 off, so the best I could do was to use my 20% off everything coupon on top of the sale price, which was 60 cents more per yard than I really wanted to pay–but the one made with a remnant was 50% off, the best deal.