Chinese New Year RED gift bags!

Our friend, Vicky, gave us a simply fantastic idea of sewing Chinese New Year gift bags – all in red!

Vicky ordered five small foldable bags, all in red, to be used as CNY gift bags when visiting friends and family.

So, I selected these pieces of cloth from my mum’s stash:

Each piece is just enough to make one small or medium-sized bag.

Vicky wants them in small size as that would be ideal as gift bags.

I started sewing last night.

Vincent in his after-work second job.

The assistant supervisor.

The other supervisor for tonight, Zurik.

Isn’t this cloth beautiful?

There is only one piece of this cloth in red, so only one bag can be made. But we have them in other colours – blue, grey, brown, etc.

And this afternoon, we received five more orders – for 2 red bags and 3 “doggie” motif bags. Luckily we still have this beautiful cloth from Chen Chen – it has little dog motifs.

And the cloth is just enough to make 3 bags too! What luck!

Part of the challenge in sewing these bags is to optimise and maximise the cloth usage. For eg, each piece of cloth can make a bag and sometimes I’m just short of a bit of cloth to make the handles. But today I discovered that I can re-use the rectangular pieces cut out at the two corners (see above) – if I unpick these pieces, they are rectangular and the length is perfect to join up to make the two handles! I’m short of about 3 inches on each handle and these rectangles are exactly 3 inches!

What joy! Re-using the parts that are normally discarded!

Just as a friend asked me today, “How did you get into sewing? Did it involve a lot of learning?” Then her husband offered an answer, “It’s all about maths, it wouldn’t be too hard for her!”

And he is right on the part about it being all about maths!

Applied maths!

We have 10 more bags to go…(new orders!). Hooray!

Vicky’s idea of gift bags is fantastic – We could have gift bags for all kind of occasions, coming up next is perhaps Valentine’s Day? Hari Raya?