Small, Rustic Dice Bag

Hey there!
If you have ever looked up how to make dicebags on the internet, I'm sure you would, like me, have only found instructions on making whopping huge bags to hold several billion dice and with 0 class. Finding myself stuck trying to find instructions on making a small, 1-set-holding dice bag (with >9000 class), I decided to make one.

Introducing the Small, Rustic Dice Bag, to hold all the dice you ever need (in one game of D&D, i.e. 1 set). Don't be phased at the number of steps in this instructable - I've gone through just about every detail so you could probably skip some of the steps if you did the project with common sense.

This is a fairly simple project, its my second-ever sewing project, so I hope you can follow along.

Without further ado, lets go!

You will need:

MATERIALS:
Fabric of your choice - I chose a brown, old-fashioned-looking fabric found at an op-shop.
Thread - I used black to blend with the fabric.
Rope - I picked up some natural cotton cord from Bunnings.
PVA Glue + Extra thread (Optional) - For joining the ends of the rope in step 14.


TOOLS:
Paper
Pencil
Scissors
Iron
Sewing Machine
Safety pin
Ruler
Chalk (for darker fabrics)
Unpicker


OTHER:
Simple sewing knowledge - can often be attained by reading the manual and testing stuff out with scrap fabric.
Dice!

A very simple design was used for this project - pretty much a rectangle with a semicircle appended to it. The above diagram shows this design.

The 10x8 rectangle+semicircle is the main body and the 3x8 rectangle above that is the flap for the drawstring. The dotted lines below the 8 show where the flaps will lie when folded.

Note that this is the intended size of the FINAL bag, so when you draw yours out, give it about 1cm around the sides for sewing clearance.

Once you have all your measurements, all enlarged by 1cm, find your maximum width (in my case it would be 8 + 2 (both sides sewing clearance)) and double it and add 4 = 24cm. Also find your maximum height and add 4 (13 + 2 (sewing clearance) + 4 ~ roughly 20cm --> good enough)

Final dimensions

Once you have all your measurements, all enlarged by 1cm, find your maximum width (in my case it would be 8 + 2 (both sides sewing clearance)) and double it and add 4 = 24cm. Also find your maximum height and add 4 (13 + 2 (sewing clearance) + 4 ~ roughly 20cm --> good enough)

Final dimensions:
24cm x 20cm

Cut it out!

N.B. On hindsight, you don't need 2cm clearance on the width, just 1cm, because one edge is folded over and doesn't need sewing - you can see this when I draw the design out on the cloth later.

N.B. Also note the third picture - I found that the edge of my cloth has some holes in it so I had to cut that off - that's why I left that 5cm extra - just in case.

Iron the cloth flat then in half - not really much to explain here.

Take your design (with the extra clearance) and copy it as accurately as you can onto the cloth. My cloth is a dark fabric so I used chalk - you can use pencil on a light fabric.

Note: The first picture is the maximum width and maximum height. The second picture shows the design, but with the extra sewing clearance on the folded edge which is not needed (see note in step 3), so I had to re-draw the design on the other side without this extra clearance (pic 3).

Something that you should add to the design here (which I did not put in the original) is the buttonhole. It should lie in the area where the flaps will be folded down later. You can see where I've positioned mine properly in pic 3.

I... cut the cloth.

If you haven't marked the first buttonhole yet, go back to step 4.

You should have a buttonhole on 1 side - open up the cloth and mirror the design and place it on the other side as well (pic 2).

These buttonholes are currently 2cm long (top to bottom) - when I sew these, I want to leave between 1/3 to 1/2 of a cm un-sewed at each end.

Grab out the sewing machine and go!

If you're a novice at sewing like myself, you may want to practice your buttonholes and perhaps some normal stitching on a scrap before doing it on the project (Pics 5 & 6).

As mentioned, start the buttonhole a short distance in from the bottom-most point of the marked line and end it a short distance from the top-most point. In pic 2, you can faintly see the lines of the design just above and below the buttonhole.

Acutally, pic 2 shows a buttonhole I didn't like - I unpicked the whole thing and re-did it.

Make the actual hole by running the thread unpicker/ripper through the gap between the sides. Don't get any of the stitches!

Go back to the iron.

Remember the 3cm at the top of the design in step 1? Now is the time to iron that down - I ironed the top 1cm flap down, then the 2cm flap over that.

This is the flap that the drawstring will run through.

Sew straight stitch across the bottom-most edge of the top flap, sticking as close to the edge as you can, perhaps about 2-3mm from the edge (see pic 2).

If you want, you can check if you've given enough clearance by threading the rope through the buttonholes. If it can move, but has some friction, it's perfect.

Sew along the body of your design, straight stitch.

I also made extra stitches along the folded side (pics 3 and 4) for aesthetics - it worked out quite well.

Nearly there!

Cut incisions at the bottom of the curve close to, but not on/through the body stitches. Turn the bag inside out and use the back of a pencil to push out the bag's bottom edges (pic 3). This gives the bag a nice curve at the bottom.


This is an optional step, but it greatly improves the aesthetics with very little effort.

Turn the bag inside out.

Cut a length of rope double + a few cm (I didn't measure mine, I estimated, but it would be about 4-6-cm extra).

If you are going to tie a knot instead of joining the ends of the rope together, give more extra rope (see next step).

Stick a safety pin through one end and guide it through one buttonhole and out the other. With natural rope, don't use normal pins - the don't work and only make the rope fray (pic 2).

Definitely the most tedious step.

At first I tried to sew the ends of the rope together (which failed), so I tried to glue the ends together, and that also failed.

SOLUTION: Porque no los dos?

Glue AND Sew the ends of the rope: I did this by applying PVA on the frayed ends and generally smooshing them together. Make sure that the ends of the rope overlap somewhat to make the 'sewing' easier.

Once the rope is glued and will naturally stay together, but not yet dry, cut a length of thread and wrap the rope up several million times, tying simple overhand knots here and there to tighten it. When you feel like you're about done, thread one end through a needle and pass it through the rope a few times.

As mentioned in the previous step, this is completely optional. You could just tie the two ends of the rope together, but I personally don't think it looks as good.

Once the glue is dry, you'll want to hide the join. This is achieved by placing it inside the drawstring pocket.

You'll need to 'shimmy' it in by drawing rope from one side and stretching the crumpled fabric out on the other.

Nearly there! Just iron the body of the bag flat in the iron...

Congratulations! You now have a small, rustic, and dare I say, cute, dice bag.


Please leave feedback and comments! I'd like to hear your opinions.