I've Been Making Cosmetic Bags!

Many of you know that in our town here in Poland they have started to have many auctions that raise money for sick children.

I made a red/white quilt and pillow to go in the auction. It took me a week to make the quilt and pillow plus a lot of stress as it was a lot of work. However, I did enjoy it and I think it is good for local people to be able to see patchwork - even if it doesn’t raise the money it should. It was a 1” finished square grid - checkerboard. I only made it a European Single because I was afraid it wouldn’t go for what it should if I had the time or energy to make it large. :) So about 60”x80”.

It raised 270 PLN or $67.86. The good thing is that it did go to someone local.

I think they did a great job of photography. I did not have to do anything once I gave it to the local agency to sell. That was nice.

I may still put another quilt or two in the auction. We’ll see. I have a few more days to decide. It is all over on the 13th and I have to give 3 days for the auction so whatever I put in, has to be put up for auction by the 10th if I want it to have 3 days.

I decided to try to make some cosmetic bags. They are quite simple, easy, no stress, and would be inexpensive compared to a quilt.

So, that is what I’ve been doing lately.

I’ve also been doing some quilting on the long arm (my own quilts) and trying to get over being sick with a bad cold last week.

So..this is what I’ve made.

These are clamshell cosmetic bags. The fabric is from the states, as you can imagine, but the interfacing, the lining, (sometimes), and the thread is from here. :) I decided to just test the waters to see if proportionately I could get far more out of cosmetic bags than a quilt on the auction.

There are four sizes I’ve made:

Xlarge - 10” long, 6.5” tall, 5” wide

Large - 7” long, 5” tall, 3.5” wide

Small - 6” long, 3” tall, 2” wide

Xsmall - 5” long, 3” tall, 2” wide

Here’s the status so far. Here’s what I’ve put up for auction and the prices I’ve gotten so far. Only a few have sold as I just got the bright idea a few days ago to even attempt this! (DUMMY ME!)

Horses - large - $15 or 60 PLN

Horses xsmall - 4.5” long

Wolves - large 60 PLN or $15



Wolves - Xlarge - 60 PLN or $15

Floral Tropical - xsmall 40 PLN or $10

Kittens- small - 55 PLN or $13

Tropical floral on black - xlarge - 55 PLN or $13

Americana - small - 30 PLN or $7.50

Books - large - 70 PLN or $17.50

Mountains - xsmall

I am finding it fascinating. I’m thrilled to be able to use some of my fantastic novelty prints in raising some money for the sick kids here. That’s exciting. Plus, I’m providing something unavailable here. This kind of fabric with these prints is really quite unheard of here. Anything even similar is imported from the USA, mostly. Most of the prints here just don’t have the detail that these do.

I did make one from a Polish manufacturer. We’ll see how it goes. (I’ll show it another time.)

These have been fun to make and a nice change from everything else. I’ll be able to explain MORE later, why I decided to really learn to make these.

I hadn’t really made any of these until recently.

As of this writing, I’m very comfortable making these cosmetic bags. In fact, maybe I could do them in my sleep. I’ve gotten quite a bit faster at them than I was at first, naturally!

After all my cosmetic bags are sold, I’ll let you know what all I made and how much was raised for the sick children!

And this is what I’ve been doing in the last few days. Now that I’m writing this blog post, I’m actually finished making them, but will be putting them up for auction until the 10th of December. The whole auction is over on the 13th and they are 3 day auctions. So I will need to put everything I’ve made up on the auction by then.

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey!

Have a great day wherever you are reading this!

Becky Petersen3 Comments