Skip to main content

How to Make June Tailor Quilt As You Go Project Bags

Tammy brings us a fun and functional project that will change the way you stay organized! June Tailor’s Quilt As You Go Project Bags are the new essential to keeping your sewing space tidy while securing all of your project pieces in one place. We used the Wander Lane II fabric collection by Nancy Halvorsen to create these darling bags, which coordinate beautifully with your supplies if you joined the On Wander Lane BOM!

With Zippidy-Do-Done-Zippers, vinyl, and easy piecing, follow along with Tammy as she shares how to create these bags using all of her favorite tools and tips along the way. 

Watch the Full Quilt As You Go Tutorials Series

- Quilt As You Go Project Bag Kit - Wander Lane - Makes 2 Bags

- Quilt As You Go Set of 2 Project Bags - White

- Quilt As You Go Set of 2 Project Bags - all colors

- On Wander Lane Collection

- On Wander Lane Collection II

NOTIONS USED IN THIS VIDEO

- Clover Press Perfect Roll & Press

- Wash-Away Wonder Tape

- Creative Grids 2-1/2" x 24-1/2"" Ruler - CGR224

- Creative Grids 4 1/2" x 8 1/2" Ruler - CGR48

- Clover Wonder Clips - Assorted Colors - 50ct

- Clover Water Soluble Pencil - 3pk

- June Tailor Eze-View Pressing Cloth - 14"x24"

- Heat-Resistant Cool Pins - Bohemian Blue - 1-7/8" - 50ct by The Gypsy Quilter

- Clover Magnetic Pin Caddy

- Clover Seam Ripper

- Schmetz Topstitch Needles - Size 80/12 5ct

- Olfa Rotary Cutters & Blades

- Sulky 50 wt Cotton Thread 1177 Avocado - 160 yds

- We're sewing on a BERNINA 770 QE and we love it!


Video Transcript:

hi everyone it's Tammy with shabby Fabrics I have a fun fun and very practical project for you today these are the June Taylor quilt as you go project bags what quilter does not need several of these in their sewing room I love project bags as you can see I've been keeping my blocks secure here my books are secure here if you're doing a block of the month this is the Wander Lane block of the month if you're doing a block of the month like this and you need a place to keep your blocks and your patterns your kits I know when I do a block of the month my blocks tend to get scattered throughout my sewing room I might leave one on my ironing board there's one over here by my cutting mat it's like they all just kind of need to Corral because you have to keep them together for maybe as long as a year so I love these project bags they're so cute I'm going to show you the backs isn't that fun I just love these so we've dressed up the zipper a little bit I'm going to walk you through how to do that these have got the vinyl is included in the kit so that you have the vinyl that you need trying to find vinyl sometimes is difficult June Taylor has taken care of that for you so let's make the small bag together today so first of all you're going to want to use some magic sizing on your fabric always use magic sizing especially when you're doing a quilt as you go it helps the fabric stays creased better Okay so here's what's in your kit is the fabric that you're going to be sewing on and I'm going to say the word fabric but it's not really fabric it's more of an interfacing this will melt if this touches your irons do not touch your iron to this so the reason I have an iron on set with me today is for the vinyl and you might think wait a minute if you iron vinyl there's going to be a mesh right you are correct about that I want to show you how this vinyl looks when it comes it's got a crease in it in the center and the directions told me to lay it out and just leave it and the crease would relax well this has been open uh more than 24 hours and I can still see a crease in that I don't want a crease in the middle of my project bags so we are going to use the June Taylor easy press this is a pressing cloth by June Taylor it's sheer so you can see through it which is very beneficial if you're pressing out a special fabrics and you need to keep track of where you're at or you're pressing blocks out but I'm going to show you how I use this to press my vinyl I'm going to set my iron up so first of all I'm going to set my iron to a synthetic setting this is the lowest setting that your iron will go do not hit this with a hot iron and do not use Steam on this all right so I'm going to place my pressing cloth on top of this and we're going to see how this magically disappears but with this pressing cloth it oh it protects my iron and that vinyl just lays right down go a little slower here there we go there we are as you can see how those creases are coming right out of this vinyl let me go ahead and press this side of it so you want to be careful not to touch your iron directly onto the vinyl the vinyl will melt all over your iron and you're not going to like it very much that's what would happen in my sewing room I think once right we all do that crazy thing once where you touch something and go oh I shouldn't have done that so I'm very cautious when I'm doing this I'm going to turn this around and just keep going but you can see how nice and flat my vinyl is it's taken those creases right out of there there we go one more time and I think I have it done it's my pressing mat is so small I have to keep turning the light on right all right so this is the Easy View pressing cloth by June Taylor these are available on our website and then it looks like this okay set that aside I'm going to move my pressing mat back over all right so let's cut our vinyl that I did not do yet I wanted to press that out with you first so I'm going to look at my directions and I'm going to cut my bino I'm going to use a long ruler for this my two and a half by 24 and a half inch by creative grids I love this ruler so helpful the other thing I wanted to show you is the vinyl comes with tissue paper it's wrapped in tissue paper so it doesn't stick to itself you're going to want to reserve this tissue paper for use later on and you'll see me use that later on in the video when we're actually sewing this together I'll show you a quick and easy way to use that so don't discard your tissue paper or give it to the cat or the children or whatever that's usually what happens to stuff like that at my house right so we're going to cut our vinyl to a 12 and a half by 17 let me get this lined up here here we go so I'm going to turn my ruler around and use the half inch side on this this ruler they're called a quick turnaround ruler I love this so you have a half inch on this side with your black numbers you have whole numbers on this side with your white numbers anytime I cut a half inch I always turn it around and I line up this solid line with a line on my cutting mat so I always know I'm cutting Dead on half an inch that's exactly a half an inch over I'm not trying to line this up with these little Dash lines on the other side okay so I'm going to cut a 12 and a half by 17. here we go that's going to work right there okay the next step is we are going to do the quilt As You Go part all right so now ahead of time what I have done is I have taking my lining which is what shows through on the front of the bag so you want to pick something cute I chose the House's print I love this print this is the on this is the Wander Lane collection by Nancy Halverson so we're going to start here and I'm going to take number one and you're just going to place it right in the center now these are placement lines they are not sewing lines I'm going to sew a quarter inch away from my placement line if you watched any of my videos you've seen me do this all right so I'm going to take my first Fabric and just line everything up with this placement line number two and number three so when I sew a quarter inch when this turns it's going to fill that space so it's not quite like paper piecing where that you're sewing on the line I want to sew next to the line on this all right so I'm going to use my cool pens by the Gypsy quilter I love these pins they're very sturdy and they are perfect for the June Taylor projects you'll see me use these all the time foreign this down and I am pinning away from my quarter inch seam allowance because I want to be able to start here and sew all the way down and not have to stop to remove a pin and that's very easy to do if you place your pins like this okay that Fabric's not going to go anywhere I don't have any seams that I'm trying to line up or any nesting I'm doing so I really don't need a PIN right next to the edge I just need to hold that fabric there okay so I'm going to go to the sewing machine and Stitch this down and I'll be right back all right let's take out our pins now remember I told you you cannot iron this right because this stuff it will melt it trusts me I know that that's a fact I have done that before all right so we're just going to fold this up and I'm going to use the Clover perfect press roll and press I love this tool I am just going to Simply roll it along the seam and that fabric just lays there it looks like I pressed it but I didn't so cool let's do that again all right perfect all right the next thing we're going to do is put the next two on this one and this one so I'm going to add this round press it I'm going to add the next round press it and then I'll be back and we will I will show you how to finish this bag out and get the top of it done with your zipper and your vinyl okay foreign [Music] this is so cute you see the back I use white threads so it wouldn't be visible all right so the next thing I'm going to do is I'm going to pin my pieces loosely along the edges here you see my cool pins and what I'm doing is I'm just trying to hold these fabric pieces down because I'm going to turn this over and I'm going to stitch from the other side and I just want to hold all these pieces in place I don't want them really going anywhere so when I trim it they're secure I'll show you all right so when I turn this over what I did was I sewed this on using green thread and that's a contrasting thread I did that so now I can see my stitching line all right so I'm going to go to the machine I'm going to sew on my on my stitching line all the way around secure my fabric so you can see I put my pins well away from where I'm going to be sewing so I don't want to sew over one of these pins all right here we go foreign all right so I'm going to take my pins out I love that magnetic pin cushion you see I'm just kind of throwing my pins in that direction and they just go right on there I love that all right so I'm going to turn this over and I'm going to take my long ruler again and a rotary cutter which I knew I had all right and we are going to trim now along the lines that I actually sewed before with the green thread so I can easily see those threads see that line just going to trim this away and we're going to set this aside and we're going to construct the front I'm going to show you how the zipper goes on this these are so much fun to make I just I love making these these are fun all right here we go our panel is done our quilt as you go panel all right let's get the zipper on this now I'll just set that up here I think all right so now we're going to take the header is what they call this the header there is a piece of that stuff in here I've quilted this ahead of time so you can see that interfacing is here in the center of this so I cut that out on the lines and I just sandwiched that between my header for my bag and I used a clover white marking pencil I love these pencils they are amazing they easily show up they're washable this comes right out actually if you just brush it it comes right off I'll show you how this marks see that it's a perfect Mark and you can just rub it and it comes out I would not be without my Clover pencils so I've got a white a blue and a pink and they're sold in a package of three so we do have those on our website so I marked my crosshatch and I just sewed it with navy blue thread all right so that is done now I'm going to take my zipper this is called the Zippity Do done Zipper by June Taylor that's their name for this very clever so they have two pieces of like bias tape here so what we're going to do is we're just going to sandwich hour header into this and I am going to here's my cool pens and I'm pinning in a specific Direction because I'm going to start here and sew down to this end and I'm pinning my pins this way so that as I'm sewing I'm not going to get caught on pins all right let's get this on here so I'm going to use white thread when I do this and I have a white bobbin in because I don't want that stitching to show all right there we go all right so I'm going to go to the machine and I'm just going to top Stitch this about an eighth of an inch from here all the way down to here foreign that is beautiful now on the other side of this is going to go by vinyl so we're going to take our vinyl that we had from the first step we pre-cut that I'm going to open this up and I'm going to set my vinyl inside here just like that I'm going to turn this I'm going to make sure that my vinyl overlaps my header and it does nice very nicely it's the same size as my zipper which is great all right and I'm going to go ahead and pin this have to kind of coax those pins through a little bit that's another reason I like these stable pins these cool pins are really nice for this if I was using my fine Patchwork pins they would be completely Bent by now put another pin in I think I'm going to pin this one more time I don't want this vinyl to move on me I want it to stay right there there we go all right so again I'm going to top Stitch here all the way down thank you cool now if you wanted to you could stop here and you could just you could just go ahead and assemble this to the front of your bag clip it together and go however I think it looks really cool to put a little decorative piece of fabric in there and they do give you directions for that I'm going to tell you how I did mine I took a two inch strip of fabric and I folded it in half wrong sides together and now I'm just gonna fold each end to the center just like this my iron says I don't want to sit on the fabric I'm going to raise up because you let go of me I love the celestial iron it is amazing we use these all the time here at shabby Fabrics that's perfect yep so we're just going to keep on going all right to the end all right now that we have it folded like this it kind of looks like bias tape doesn't it all right now I'm just going to take it and I'm going to fold it in half and press it and I'm going to take my Wonder Clips which are right here and I'm just going to put a little clip in the end of this I just want to hang on to that so that fabric remembers it's supposed to stay like that give me something to hang on to and pull it put another clip in this about right here just press this along they're just making a little decorative accent to put on the zipper you can use any kind of fabric you like I like the green to bring back into the front of these thought that was cute there we go all right oh look at that there's a mini Wonder clip in with my Wonder clips you see how little this one is this is a mini Wonder clip they're just like half the size of the Wonder clips I don't know how they got in there okay so now I'm going to go back to the machine and I'm going to start sewing this an eighth of an inch on the folded Edge because I want to seal those two edges together all right I don't want them to come apart so I'm going to top Stitch this and I'm going to change my thread to green and then I'll be back okay so I have sewn on that side let me trim this to red that I didn't top Stitch the other side because I'm going to do that when I top Stitch it to the back so I didn't feel the need to top Stitch it twice so we just need to do it once so let's get our bag over here I'm going to take the front of this now I want this to lay straight on here so I have a trick for getting this to lay straight this is wash away Wonder tape I love Wonder tape it is Wonder it is just like the name implies and I'm just going to apply it just to the back and I'm just pressing this on it's sticky it does wash away so if you were to use this like on clothes or in a quilt first time you wash that quilt this tape is going to be completely gone it is not going to be there I don't ever intend to wash my project bags but you never know you never know okay so we get this started and we're just going to peel the paper away from this like this okay it's very sticky on the other side and I know that this was a lot longer than I need so I'm just going to start placing this as I'm placing I'm just pressing this down pressing this into place and I'm just trying to keep I'm winding this up straight in front of me on the table so I could kind of keep an eye on what's happening with this I want to keep this straight with the zipper just like that now you could take this straight to your machine and just Stitch this and I think that's exactly what I'm going to do I'm going to go ahead and apply my Wonder tape to my other one that I already made and I'm going to put another one right here with my little zipper Tab out of the way just like that all right so I'm going to do that and then I'll see you over at the machine and I will Top Stitch that down all right so I'm back we have got the two isn't that cute I've got it all stitched down very simple easy to do it didn't take a lot you can put all kinds of decorative trim ribbons embellishments whatever you like on the front of this have fun with it I would love to see pictures of what you guys have done with project bags please post pictures for us either in our Facebook group you can tag us on Instagram or put or just right here on YouTube I would love to see what you guys are doing with these these zippers come in different colors so if you have a project that's red we have a red zipper or a tan zipper or there's all colors of zippers and we do have them all okay these are the white ones that we used all right so now I'm going to take the backing slash front slash lining kind of right we're going to lay it out and now I'm going to trim and I'm going to make sure aha yay these two pieces match as they should all right you can see that these match so now I'm going to trim my vinyl and my zipper to be the same size all right as my back piece that's my quilted piece all right here we go so I'm cutting through a lot of layers especially with the zipper I'm going to cut slowly over it it is a vinyl or plastic zipper so it's not metal so it's not going to destroy my blade but I do have a new blade in here to be able to get through that thickness of that here we go yep no problem hey one more trim make sure I'm still lined up like I thought I was everything looks good there we go perfect all right now it's starting to take shape I love that okay so our next step is to sew these two together all right and to do that remember I told you we have that tissue paper here's where I put it I know I had that I know I put it aside somewhere all right so I'm going to open this up I'm going to take my ruler and I'm just going to trim some one inch strips and yes I'm going to use the same rotary cutter and cut paper with it I just need a one inch strip I think I'm going to cut three of them should be plenty okay okay now the cat can have tissue paper my cats love that kind of thing I don't know why it makes noise I think and crinkles they love it okay here we go so now I'm going to take my Clips I definitely want to clip this anytime I'm working with vinyl I'm not going to put any pins through this the only time I'm going to put a hole in it is when I Stitch it to this right so when I'm stitching all right so I'm going to start clipping this now all right you could probably use pins at the Top If you wanted to but since I have the clips out I'm just going to go ahead and clip this together and I'm making sure that I'm putting my Wonder Clips the bottom with the flat side is the side that goes against the bed of your sewing machine so it Glides across your machine this would get caught in my feet might feed dogs up there's that little baby one again it keeps coming to the top okay now I'm going to take my tissue paper and just lay it on here and I'm going to clip that and grab them out of here like this all right there we go I'm just going to clip this all together clipping that tissue paper right in there now the tissue paper is going to prevent my feed my presser foot from grabbing a hold of the vinyl and it's just going to slide seamlessly across I'm going to be able to sew this easily otherwise my presser foot tries to grab that vinyl because it's kind of like a it's tacky right it's almost tacky it's not slippery like you would expect okay when we're side and we're going to head to the machine and I'm going to stitch this together what turn it over all right that should do it okay so I'm going to stitch with a basting stitch close to the outer edge all along this all the way around this when I come back I'll have that done and I'll show you how to finish it with the binding Okay so we've basted that down put my Clips away so I'm going to go ahead and tear off my tissue paper Okay so we've got our paper off I've got everything done one last step to finish this bag and that's our binding all right so I have made my binding ahead of time I simply took a two and a half inch strip folded it together wrong sides and pressed it just as you normally would regular binding all right I'm going to start at the top I'm going to stitch this on with a quarter inch seam allowance I'm going to start about right here but I'm going to leave a long tail maybe a little longer than that I like that better okay so I'm going to start stitching here around miter my Corners all the way around I'm going to leave it opening a quite a substantial opening because I want my magic binding to come together correctly I'm going to show you how to do that so we're going to go ahead and start right here and sew this on so I will see you at the sewing machine oh foreign Tails top and bottom sewed my binding on let me show you how I attach this so I'm going to have a ruler I already met over here this will work we grab a friction pen all right so what I want to do so I'm going to fold my binding like this and I want to leave a gap between my two folds I want a quarter inch Gap this does not have to be a perfect exact quarter inch I just eyeball this I do not measure that all right we get my quarter inch this is also why I started at the top because I have to put an iron on this binding I could not do that if I had started here at the bottom on the vinyl I would be melting vinyl to my iron right now so this is a hot iron I have it turned all the way up to Cotton is I want that seam to set right in there you want those creases that looks great all right so this strip we're going to open it and I'm just going to lay it open like this you can see that nice crease on the top and I can see my crease to this horizontally there I'm going to take this strip open it up and I'm just going to turn it like this okay now I'm going to match the bottom crease with this crease and I'm matching the top crease on this piece of binding with the side crease on this one all right just like that I'm going to lay my ruler parallel to my project all right and I'm going to draw a line with a friction pen this is my sewing line that I am drawing just like that and I'm going to take a couple of pins here I'm going to put one pin across the top like that hook it all away so you guys can see that I'm going to put my other pin along the side I'm going to lay my ruler parallel to that side because I don't want this coming apart yeah I don't want this one coming apart now I'm just going to go sew this right off the medicine and I'll show you how this works all right here we go I'm going to take out my pins now I'm actually going to test this and look at that it fits perfect I'm testing it before I cut it if it did not work I would have to re-sew that but it's perfect this method of doing binding works perfectly every time I'm just going to trim this with a pair of scissors I could trim this with a rotary cutter if you wanted to I generally just use scissors it's nobody's going to see the seam just a little quarter inch seam allowance perfect and I'm going to press my seam open I'm pressing the seam open for a couple of reasons one it's binding and I always do that second I am going to hand Stitch this binding to the back of this okay so now I'm going to go Stitch this together you can see how nice and straight and even that is I'm going to go ahead and Stitch this closed all right there we go finding all Perfect all right so now I'm going to hand Stitch this binding to the back of this project normally if you guys have seen my other videos I know I normally will take and top Stitch along the edge of this to catch my binding with my machine on the back I machine Stitch all kinds of biting placemats table runners wall hangings even quilts if I'm giving them to my grandkids because I know they're going to be washed a lot I always always machine Stitch my binding but in this case I'm going to sew this down by hand my reason being I don't want to run another line of stitching right here along that vinyl I think that those stitches those holes could weaken that bottle a little bit and I did not want to do that I decided that it had been stitched enough to hold it in place that I would now simply use my binding Clips my Wonder Clips clip this and go sit on the couch with a cup of tea and hand Stitch my binding I hope you've enjoyed this video I absolutely love the June Taylor project bags we love these things I've made several in a lot of different Collections and again I would really love to see what you guys do with this if you do some decorative quilting in here how you dress up your bags please let us know and I'll see you next time on a Shabby Fabrics video