Easter Egg Hunt Bags

100% Wool Felt is the perfect material for a quick project like this, it comes in a wide spectrum of incredible colors, and it’s such a breeze to sew with since it requires no hemming.

We picked a pretty rainbow of Fettucia Cotton Ribbon and Ecru Ric-Rac  in a variety of widths to accent the bags and make them ultra-Eastery. They’ll be great fun to make with the kids after you’re done dying eggs!

Designed by Purl Soho designer, Molly Schnick. Click here to see even more of Molly’s work!

Materials

To make two  bags:

• One 18-inch square of 100% wool felt. We used Ecru, Coral, and Tan
• Trims: 1 yard pieces of Fettucia Cotton ribbon in a variety of pretty colors, as many as you like (if you’d like to use one of these as the bag handle make sure to get 2 yards of that particular color.) And one yard lengths of ric-rac in various sizes (I used the ecru color)
• Cotton thread to match your felt ric-rac and ribbon. If you will be using many different colors of trims you can use Invisible Thread which will save you the pain of changing colors all the time.

Size

7 1/2-inches tall by 8-inches wide

Pattern

Cutting

Cut your felt square in half so you have 2 pieces, 9-inches by 18-inches.

Arrange one of these pieces horizontally as shown above. Lay your trims across the piece centering them, with each trim a 1/4-inch from it’s neighbor. Take note of the order, since you will be pinning and sewing them on one by one.

Sewing on the Ric-Rac

Pin the the middle piece of trim horizontally across the length of the felt piece. Make sure to pin it absolutely straight.

Sew the pinned trim down. For the ric-rac sew one seam down the middle, for the ribbon edge stitch each side.

Sew the other trims to the bag in the same manner, with each trim 1/4-inch from it’s neighbor. Cut the edges of the trims to be flush with the edges of the felt piece.

Here is a close up of the sewn trims. The ric-rac is sewn once through the middle while the ribbon is edge stitched on each side. Since this bag used multiple trim colors we used invisible thread to sew them all on.

Sewing

Fold the felt in half width wise, like a book, with the right sides together. Pin it shut along the bottom and side seam, leaving the top open. Press the felt very flat to create a side crease.

Sew the pinned sides closed with a 1/2-inch seam allowance.

This bag has a small gusset. To form it open up the bag so that the side seam and the bottom seam are on top of one another at the corner where they meet and iron the corner flat, making sure the seam allowances are facing in the same direction. Make a 1 3/4-inch marking perpendicularly across the side seam (show in blue in the picture above.) Pin across this marking.

Sew across the marking and trim off the corner, 1/4-inch from the seam.

Do this for the opposite corner of the bag, but this time use the side crease instead of the side seam to line up with the bottom seam.

Attaching the Handles

Cut a 14-inch length of ribbon.

Pin it to the inside of the bag at the side seam and side crease, 1-inch from the top edge of the bag.

Sew the handle on at the bottom edge of the ribbon and top edge of the bag.

Repeat all these steps to make a second (and a third and a fourth…) bag!