Camping and cutlery

If I do something (especially for someone else) I try do do it right. So when my father asked me a couple of weeks ago to devise some kind of bag for our camping-cutlery, I knew two things: firstly, that this could be a very quick and easy project and secondly, that I'd make damn sure that it wasn't going to be too quick and easy.
That being said, me being a university-student first and hobby-seamstress only second, I had to get some studying and exam-writing out of my way before I could get to sewing, but at least that gave me plenty of time to plan the project and think and rethink what materials I wanted to use how. Since this bag is going to be used mostly in/with our camping van and I had tons of fabric left over from sewing the curtains, I wanted to use the green-checkered fabric in some way. I thought about using it as a simple lining, but then thought a sturdier fabric might be better suited to withstand knife- and forkpoints. After rummaging through my (and my mother's) stash, I found a blue sturdy fabric of a surprisingly narrow width - I'd say about 80cm. No clue what my mother used it for, as it was still in one piece when I foun it o.O
Anyway, I'd seen and read some tutorials about  piping and just love the way contrasting piping looks as a seamfinish, so the green-checkered cotton was going to be used as piping. On to the pictures!

Lots of biasstrips

Cutting biasstrips from checkered fabric is so easy that I got a bit carried away and cut a lot more than I actually needed. Which wouldn't be too bad if I also hadn't cut them so narrow that it's hard to use them for anything else than piping. Ah well, we live and learn :)
As I wanted my bag to be 50cm*50cm, I knew my piping had to be a little over 2m long. I sewed the three longest strips together, folded them in half and sewed in the cord using a zipper foot and moving the needle to the very left

Just keep piping, piping, piping...

(Stuck in my head right now.) I then sandwiched the green piping between the two blue layers (kinda tricky in the corners) and sewed around the square, using the zipperfoot and leaving a small opening so that I could turn the whole thing inside-out.

I think that's the first time I've sewn an entire
project with a zipper-foot... :)

After turning it inside-out and ironing it, I cut the piping ends to match, leaving a little fabric to be folded over to hide the raw edges. Then I sewed the opening closed by hand using a combination of a whip- and a running stitch (only catching the blue fabric going out, not going in)

The easy way would have been to fold the thing up and sew the compartments in the same blue thread I used for handsewing. But that would have looked so boring. (Plus I was too lazy to thread the sewing machine with the blue thread and wind a new spool. Funny how laziness so often leads to more work rather than less, don't you think?)
As I said, I had cut way too many bias strips for the piping, so I decided to cut four strips to length, fold the edges to the middle, fold the ends under and sew them onto the bag. Did I mention that the strips were a little too narrow to be comfortably folded and pressed? No? Well, I didn't burn my fingers, but by the time I was done bending over the ironing board I felt like Quasimodo. Anyway, as it was almost two in the morning, I didn't take any pictures of the process, but I think the result speaks for itself:

Much prettier than mere stitching.

The ties were made by sewing two of the strips together and turning inside out. All in all, it's a very simple project that everyone who's ever had a beginner's sewing course has done in variations (I know I have) but it still makes me happy that such a simple thing can be made so pretty. As I said before: if I'm gonna do it, I might as well do it right ;)

With the top folded down...

... and tied closed :)