Promotional Drawstring Bag No Sew Upcycle — Sum of their Stories Craft Blog

Upcycle a promotional cloth drawstring bag and turn it into a pretty gift bag.

Do you keep those cloth drawstring bags you get with purchases sometimes because they are too good to throw away but then wonder what to do with them?

A few years ago I showed you how to upcycle a cloth bag with fabric scraps, lace, haberdashery etc to cover a store logo.

That is not difficult to do but does involve some stitching and although I love to sew I realise that not everyone does.

So when I had this sweet little cloth drawstring bag to upcycle I tried a no sew option to share with you.

To upcycle a cloth promotional drawstring bag into a reusable gift bag you will need:

A promotional cloth bag to upcycle
Scraps of fabric, print and plain
Bondaweb/Heat n Bond or other double sided fusible webbing
An iron

This couldn’t be simpler really, let’s get started.

Cut a piece of fabric a little larger than the logo or promotional words on the bag that you wish to cover. Cut a piece of bondaweb the same size and iron as per the instructions to fuse the webbing to the fabric.

Repeat for a smaller piece of fabric, I had a scrap of this sweet print fabric that lent itself to being cut as a square but you could cut out a motif if you prefer, it will depend what fabric you are using.

It’s always easiest to cut your fabric a little larger than you need and iron on the backing and then cut out the precise shape you want.

When you fabric shapes are ready peel off the backing paper, position them onto your bag and then iron into place as per the instructions. When you are ironing bondaweb or other fusible webbing like this try not to move the iron around like you would when ironing clothes. Instead press down, then lift and press down again rather than sliding the iron.

You can see from my photos that I actually fused the print fabric to the pink piece first but on reflection that was entirely unnecessary, you could just layer it up and then iron all in one go.

As long as you are using a good quality fusible product and you fuse it as directed on the packet you shouldn’t have any issue with it peeling off in a hurry.

You could add extra embellishments like sequins, beads, buttons etc if you like and I imagine a good fabri-tac type glue would work well for this. (You could resort to a little sewing and stitch extra embellishments on, which I confess is what I would do, but don’t tell anyone as I called this a “no sew” project!)