Handmade Party bags

Taking time and making the effort to make party bags for my daughters party was no mean feat.  I rather ambitiously thought it would be a doddle but it took rather a bit of my time but it was time well spent.  You may have discovered, from my recent previous post, that I dabble in a spot of guerrilla bagging, read more about it here.  I really am not all that keen on plastic bags and I am not really all that keen on giving gifts that will be thrown away in a thrice ending up in some landfill to take years to biodegrade.  I am keen on handmade and I am keen on getting the little folk to have an appreciation of it too.  Kids are naturally drawn to creativity.   Recently I spent some time with the local Brownie group teaching them to finger knit, and make flowers for a local community project, and I have seen just how enthused they are to use their hands to make things.  My thoughts are that if you give children something that is handmade they will become curious about its creation and will want to find out how to do it themselves or at least ask the question 'did you make this' to which I would reply 'yes and you could make this too!' 
 My offerings were really dictated by my stash box.  I had lots of wool, lots of felt and plenty of cardboard and envelopes that I had saved from the mounds of junk mail posted through my door.

I started off by making these mini bags from old shirt fabric and curtain lining for the handles.  If you go to the Morsbags site you will find out how to make a simple reusable cloth bag, as well as how to help a wonderful cause.

I also wanted to hand make a few items to put in the bag.  I decided to yarn bomb some apples.  I had seen these lovely patterns before but I made my own up, using bigger stitches because I was a bit limited for time.  These ones took me about 15 - 20 minutes to crochet.  They are quite cute and help to protect apples from becoming bruised in transit to school. 

There seems to be something of a craze for moustaches at the moment and I have seen knitted finger moustaches like this one, which I tried out but they didn't come out as well as I would like so I adapted things a bit to get the result I wanted.  This one was partly knitted then I cut out the moustache shape from an old felted jumper and stitched it to the knitted finger ring. 

I also made these little note pads from cereal boxes, inspired by this tutorial, and the insides of old junk mail envelopes.  I have a big industrial sewing machine so I can stitch through several layers of paper quite easily, although the needle gets blunt very quickly.

 The party bags seemed to go down really well.  One little fella asked 'why do you need to keep an apple warm?' which I thought was funny.  Well they do look like woolly jumpers, don't they.
I shall sit down and do some patterns for the apple covers and moustaches so keep a look out for the tutorials which will be on here and free of charge!