Do you air dry your laundry? Peg bags are a cute and practical way to store your clothes pegs. Find an easy and cheap way to sew a peg bag.
Find a step by step tutorial that shows you how to make a peg bag using a pillowcase and a baby clothes hanger.
Are you keen to spruce up your laundry routine with a cute and practical peg bag? And are the peg bags that you’ve seen thus far too pricey for you or not quite the style you want?
I’ve been there! When my previous peg holder gave up the ghost after four years of intensive use. I resorted to sowing my own peg bag after being dissatisfied with the options I was seeing in online shops.
After keeping an eye on nice fabrics every time I entered a charity shop. I finally found a cute pillowcase for a measly 1 pound 50!
It was a little eureka moment because I was originally searching for a curtain or a tablecloth. But a pillowcase turned out to be much easier to work with since two sides are already sewn for you! The tutorial will explain that further for you.
It took me an afternoon and evening with the help of my mother in law who is a great seamstress. We planned out how we could best turn the pillowcase into a peg bag. While I started the sewing, my mother in law finished it for me when little Seth was getting fussy. A big thank you Sian!
Don’t feel discouraged if you are not great at sewing. With these instructions, I am sure you will be able to do it.
HOW TO MAKE A PEG BAG
1. Gather all your supplies! You will need:
– A pillowcase
– A baby clothes hanger
– A4 paper
– Fabric scissors
– Thread and needle
– A measuring tape
– Pins
– A pen or pencil
2. Trace the outline of the baby clothes hanger on the A4 paper and make sure to leave a little gap at the top. It’s where you’ll stick the hanger through!
3. Cut out the outline and make sure to keep the remainder of the A4 paper, you will need it later. Pin the outline on the pillowcase at the height where you want it. I chose to measure out 27 centimetres under the outline. You want to make sure to leave a centimetre on the left side for the seam.
4. Pin the remainder of the A4 paper on the pillowcase as shown in the photo. Again, make sure that there’s 1 centimetre left between the right side of the clothes hanger outline and the right side of the A4 paper. Once it’s all pinned down, use fabric scissors to cut the fabric!
5. When you’ve cut it all, you can remove the remainder of the A4 paper. But you’ll be leaving the clothes hanger outline on it. As you can see, the left and bottom side are already sewn because we’ve used a pillowcase. Now, all we need to focus on is the right side, the opening in the front for the pegs, and the top!
6. Now, you’ll fold the right side inwards to create a seam and pin it all together.
Whoops as you can see in the photo’s it’s getting dark but we weren’t giving up! We had tea and cookies and were determined to finish the peg bag.
7. Sew the right side of the peg bag together with a backstitch.
8. Time to cut the opening in the front piece of fabric. Cut the opening at 23 centimetres from the bottom. Make sure to leave 3 centimetres on the left and right side of the opening.
9. Fold the seams inwards and pin it stuck.
Because of the type of fabric we were working with, things were starting to get a little bit trickier now. The fabric started to unravel where we cut it for the opening. My mother in law advised me to use a zigzag stitch here to keep the fabric together. That worked well but it did take a bit longer!
I was getting really excited at this point. It was really starting to come together and it looked exactly as I envisaged!
10. Fold and pin the edges at the top inwards to create the seam and sew the front and back top seam separately. We used both a back stitch and zigzag stitch for this!
11. The last step is to position the baby clothes hanger in between the front and back and to sew the top together.
Unfortunately I didn’t make a photo of this step since it was getting late and the little one needed to go to bed. But the following photo is the result!
I hope I’ve explained this clearly but if you have any questions make sure to leave them below. And if you end up making this, I’d love to see how it turned out and what print you decided to go for!
