Half-rectangle triangle sachets

Readers, I sewed.

I am not going to claim that our new shared office/atelier space makes it easier for me to find the time to sew. And certainly the reality is not always pretty.



But having the space to spread out a cutting mat and set up an ironing board without moving a bunch of other things out of the way first sure makes the whole experience a lot more pleasant.





Recently I made some sachets as holiday gifts for some friends and family members. This was a nice, manageable project that nevertheless offered the fun of picking out fabrics and the excitement of learning a new patchwork technique.

I bought some little muslin bags at our local hippie supply store and filled them with lavender and plastic scent beads that I had soaked in cedar oil. I sewed the tops closed and clipped out the drawstrings to reduce bulk at the top of the bag.



Then I made covers for the sachets. One side was a simple rectangle of fabric and the other was composed of two triangles of coordinating prints. I love half-square triangle patchwork and it turns out that half-rectangle triangles are not much harder to do.

I do wish that I had managed to sew the covers closed in a tidier way. But I needed a quick machine method to finish these, I didn't have time to sew them closed by hand. And I think they do the job even so -- we've kept similar sachets (though without the fancy covers) in our closets for the last year or so and they really smell wonderful.



Materials:

• Top row, fabrics from the Liberty Lifestyle Bloomsbury collection. Triangles are Dorothy and Woolf; backs are Catherine -- all in the Pale Blue color way.
• Bottom row, fabrics by Anna Maria Horner. Triangles are Bubble Burst in Sweet Cream from the Innocent Crush collection and Sundials in Amethyst from the Field Study collection. Backs are Specimen in Dreamy, also from Field Study.

Methods:

• Half-rectangle triangles tutorial (A Thousand Needles)
• My finished sachets are 3" x 5". The sides of the sachet are cut at 3.5" x 5.5" and sewn together with a .25" seam allowance. Rectangles for the half-rectangle triangles are cut at 4" x 6".
• Lavender and cedar sachets (Wise Craft)

(I have to admit that with the section above I'm sort of ripping off this excellent quilting blog. The science nerd in me can't resist and the journalist in me is compelled to cite my sources.)