Early in 2016 a good friend of mine gave me two fabric sample books. It took several months to find a sewing project worthy of the larger polyester rectangles. During October I was volunteering for my local theater group’s costume department. One of the issues they were having at the time was that actors couldn’t find their costumes easily. I dawned on me that luggage tags (1 for each actor’s hanger) might be the perfect solution. I discussed the possibility with the Costume Department Manager and made a sample luggage tag for her to see. Once I had received the go ahead and some donated materials, it was full steam ahead. You can find the online tutorial for the Sid’s Quilts luggage tags I sewed here:
There are many luggage tag tutorials on the internet. I selected this one to sew for 4 reasons:
1) it holds a business-card sized information card
2) it has a vinyl window so that the card can easily be seen
3) the exterior fabric needed for 1 was the roughly the same size as each of the polyester squares in my fabric sample book ergo… each luggage tag would be have a different exterior colour
4) slipping the strap through the button hole prevents the business card from falling out.
Here are my thoughts on this project.
This tutorial starts with a few sentences about the benefits of handmade luggage tags. Next is the materials list and the cutting instructions. The materials list assumes that you are cutting all of the required pieces out of the same fabric, but you can easily mix and match as I did. The steps were clearly described and with 1 photo (or more) per step, this tutorial was extremely easy to follow.
I was donating more than 40 of these luggage tags to the theatre group and found it quite easy to set up an assembly line; first sewing the fronts, then the backs then the straps, lastly final assembly.
Here are some photos of my finished luggage tags.
I really like how they turned out and would make them again.
Have you made luggage tags?
Tanya
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