{"id":3395,"date":"2009-10-28T06:01:58","date_gmt":"2009-10-28T13:01:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/?p=3395"},"modified":"2016-11-08T23:13:43","modified_gmt":"2016-11-09T06:13:43","slug":"no-whining-but-wining","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/2009\/10\/no-whining-but-wining\/","title":{"rendered":"No Whining, But “Wining”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Friday was a busy day, of which the crowning glory was a trip to buy wine as a gift. I bought the wine and laid the bags (small paper wine bags inside a doubled plastic grocery bag) in the trunk for the trip home. I don’t know why I didn’t bring my own bags into the store, especially since two of which were right there in the trunk. If I had, we may not be having this conversation right now.<\/p>\n

Just before I closed the trunk I thought what a hideous wrapping that collection of bags was. Please note that I do not wrap gifts with paper. I avoid it at all costs. Once in a blue moon, if there is some good reason why I must, I will struggle through the process. Imagine a small person who has rumpled gift wrap all over the room, tape covering her hands, face and legs, a sore back and who is fuming with rage. That is me. I sincerely dislike wrapping gifts with paper. I remembered a pattern I had copied from the Bag Bazaar: 25 Stylish Bags to Sew in an Afternoon<\/a> by Megan Avery<\/a> for a wine bag and thought I would make a couple for the bottles.<\/p>\n

I dutifully read through the directions, which made no sense, as per usual<\/a>. I started in on following the directions. I find that if I go slowly, I will get through the pattern. Except for this one. There were two directions that were on pages that I had not made notes from. The first one was for the handle, which said ‘make handle according to directions on page 18.” I didn’t have notes from page 18 so I made the handle like I would for the Eco-Market Tote.<\/p>\n

After I got to the instruction for the main body of the bag, which said, something like, trace pattern from next page on cardstock or a manila folder. Since I didn’t have that page either, I went online and found a pattern for gift and wine bags<\/a> so I could just get the measurement. This was an okay tactic and I used some of the directions from the online pattern. I ended up, however, essentially taking my own measurements – 12″x15″ for the outside and 11.5″x14.5″ for the lining, if you are interested. I read and sort of followed the basic overall directions in both patterns, dealing with the details myself.<\/p>\n

\"Wine<\/a>
Wine Bag, test mode<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One of the first issues was fabric. I have no shortage of fabric, but I wanted to use something that wouldn’t kill me with boredom and would fit the decor of my friends. They have a gorgeous house that uses lots of earth tones with some forest and tree kind of accents. I have been trying to think of ways to use my beiges and this seemed like a perfect opportunity. Still, I didn’t want to hate the project.<\/p>\n

I found a great mottled pinky-beige with gold leaves, tastefully, screenprinted over the background. Perfect! I also had a lot of it. I picked out a marbled beige and brown for the lining.<\/p>\n

\"Wine<\/a>
Wine Bag, detail<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The directions above say to cut a piece 6″x34″. These measurements did not make sense to me. I knew that wine bottles were neither 6″ around nor 34″ tall, thus there was no way I was cutting\u00a0 a piece with those measurements. I got the measurements, in the end, by measuring a bottle of wine.<\/p>\n

NOTE to designers: please give some explanation up front when you want someone to cut a piece that seems way bigger, or more oddly shaped, than needed. I am sure you have a good reason, so please let me know.<\/p>\n

The red wine in the bag above was my test bottle. Yes, people will be mad at me for messing up their sediment process. Oh well. I was surprised to find that a wine bottle is about 11″ inches around.<\/p>\n

I could have used the leave-a-hole-and-turn-the-bag-and-lining-right-side-out, but I didn’t feel like figuring out where the handles were supposed to go in that process. I put the whole thing together and folded the top hem down, inserted the straps and top-stitched around. It was a tight fit in my machine, but worked in the end.<\/p>\n

I also neatly sank my knots and threads. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

\"Wine,<\/a>
Wine, wrapped and ready<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Above are my wine bags with the actual gift wines in them and ready to go. I have to admit that I thought about the height a bit. I wondered if I should make the bag shorter so the neck of the bottle was slightly visible. In the end, I decided the gift would be more of a surprise if the height covered the entire bottle. There would also be no interference between the neck and the handle.<\/p>\n

I realize that some of you don’t drink wine. This pattern could be easily adapted to another gift drink such as Martinelli’s Sparkling Cider, or even a bottle of soda. It might be a nice way to wrap a gift bottle during the upcoming holidays.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Friday was a busy day, of which the crowning glory was a trip to buy wine as a gift. I bought the wine and laid the bags (small paper wine bags inside a doubled plastic grocery bag) in the trunk for the trip home. I don’t know why I didn’t bring my own bags into … Continue reading “No Whining, But “Wining””<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[389],"tags":[86,66],"class_list":["post-3395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-389","tag-off-topic-crafts","tag-tote-bags"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artquiltmaker.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}