Wedding Gift Bags

I suppose this could also go under my DIY Bride series because this project is actually several wine bags I sewed to give away as gifts to some of our wedding helpers.  Shawn will be putting together some hunting knives for the guys, so I figured we should get magnetic knife blocks as well.  To hold them, I've sewn a few long bags to hold those gifts, and later the bags can be used to hold a bottle of wine.

The hardest part about these were figuring out the dimensions of the bag and the number of pieces required to make each bag.  Originally, I wanted to make zippered bags.

But I didn't like the way the handles looked attached to the outside, so I scrapped that idea and did handles sandwiched between the outer fabric and lining, like this:

The bags could've been a little wider and longer, but they should all fit a bottle of wine, and they'll certainly fit the gifts we're giving, so I think my work here is done.  I gotta say doing several of the same thing can get quite tedious and boring.  If I didn't have a looming deadline, I doubt I would've gotten around to sewing so many of the same thing.

You may have noticed one of the bags in the first picture that's not a wine bag.  That is actually a non-wedding gift for a co-worker who informed me she's leaving us :(  Last year, when I was making Sewing Project #16, she happened to see some of the floral fabric I was using and remarked how pretty the fabric was.  I decided then that I'd make something for her with that fabric.  I guess having the deadline (again) was enough motivation for me to get this project done.  Hopefully she likes it and uses it.

Those two pillows behind the bags are covered with jersey knit fabrics I bought in Prague.  They're so bright and cute that I knew I had to get them.  They've made our pillows really comfy!