Another Exhibition Bag

Three years ago I made an exhibition bag -a padded bag for holding items submitted to the Embroiderers' Guild exhibition. It was a large bag, because the piece I was entering in the exhibition was of reasonable size. When I was recently asked to put items I had made last year at Guild classes in a monthly Gallery display at the Guild I used the bag to submit them - but thought it would have been better to have a smaller bag.

I had a smaller, but fair-sized strip of padded fabric left over from making the original bag, so spent an afternoon making a second bag. The strip was about 45cm wide, but quite long.
I experimented with folding it in ways that gave me pockets, or segments, in which different articles could be stored.

I worked out that, without cutting the strip, I could get two internal and one external pocket.








I had plenty of regular bias binding but that was not going to be wide enough to cover these edges - some of which were four padded fabric thicknesses. Before heading out to buy wide bias binding, I hunted through my stash. where I found a strip of fabric that looked fine with the red, and, cut in half lengthways, would make an excellent binding for these edges.


Easy peasy.

Below right is the inside - two pockets created from the folding of the fabric.


Left is the pocket at the bottom on the outside. The closing flap is long enough to go all the way around and cover the outside pocket.

I  reverted to the button closure I had used on the original bag, using the same large wooden buttons I bought in quantity online some years ago.

This closure needs only three buttonholes.

However, by adding further rows of buttons, I can get different closures to give me various sizes of bag - so, flexibility with what I can fit in the bag for displays or exhibition submissions.

Using the narrow red bias binding I rejected for binding the bag edges, I added a transparent window (from a discarded plastic folder) for including a list of contents and my contact details.











So, next time I'm asked to put something in a display or exhibition I have a choice of bags. There is also one less piece of fabric waiting for a purpose!