In the last two posts I talked about making and using a braiding star tool to make cording. The question is “what do you do with the cording?”

Cording can be used for friendship bracelets, used with beads for necklaces or bracelets, used in drawstring bags or really anything that needs a cord.

I knew I wanted to use my cording for a drawstring backpack. I cut my lengths of cotton yarn 72 inches long (6 feet) and wrapped the yard around clothes pins with spring action to keep the yard from tangling. You can’t make cording that long without doing something to control the yarn. My finished cord is just about 60 inches long.

I combined two patterns to make the drawstring bag above. One was the DYI Drawstring Bag pattern on the Spoonflower.com blog. The other is the reversible Drawstring Backpack tutorial on SkiptoMyLou.org.

The backpack above is reversible like the Skip to My Lou backpack and I also I used that pattern to create the channel for the cords at the opening of the backpack. But I used the fabric tabs from the Spoonflower Drawstring Bag pattern instead of the grommets suggested in the Skip to My Lou pattern.

I put tabs on both the denim and and floral fabric layers of the bag, so this bag really is reversible. The knots at the bottom tabs will have to be untied and retied when the back in turned inside out. But that should be easy.

I used lightweight denim for one layer of this backpack and lightweight home dec fabric for the other layer. Because of the weight of these two fabrics together, the top of the bag can’t be closed totally tight. When I make another, I will probably use one mid-weight fabric for durability and a lighter fabric on the inside and not have the bag be reversible. The beauty of the two layer bag is that there are no visible seams in the bag, and therefore, no raw or serged edges. Another option would be to use two layers of quilting weight cotton or some ripstop nylon fabric.

Braiding the cords look me a couple weeks of on and off braiding. The bag only took an hour or two to sew! But I love the fact that it is all homemade!

Notice: This blog is not monetized: I do not use affiliate links. When there are links in a post, they are to give credit to another creative person, because I like or have used a product, or to help the reader easily find supplies for a project.