Dreams Impossible Dreams: How to make a Ham Bag

A Ham Bag is a tradition in my family, we always had a Ham Bag at Christmas and when I moved out of home, my mum made me a Ham Bag for Christmas! As such I was shocked to hear that my lovely friend Chloe not only didn't have one, but hadn't even heard of one!

As they are very easy to make, and I knew she was hosting a big Christmas lunch this year, I thought that it would make a great Christmas gift for her and her family.

So this is my tutorial on: How to make a Christmas Ham Bag

So to start with you need a piece of calico - any natural fibre material will work, but it has to be natural so it can breath. To make life easy I just brought a strip of calico 55cm wide, straight off the roll at Spotlight. By the time you do the hems and joins this is the perfect size; it may look big at this stage but remember there is going to be a rather large ham in it soon!

So first thing to do is to hem your two short edges - this will be the the opening of the bag. I always do a double hem (roll the hem twice) as this looks so much neater. Just put your sewing machine on a straight stitch and away you go - two straight lines.

Once you have completed that very simple task you get be be a bit creative! You can have any design that you want on the front of your bag - the sky is the limit here! I chose to do some Christmas tree decorations, so I grabbed a scrap of Christmas fabric I had leftover from a kids project I had done:

Flipping the fabric over I drew my desired pattern on the back of the fabric, and cut it out.

After you have cut out your design you need to place it on the bag fabric in the position that you want it to be. Remember that the bag will be tied up the top so anything you put up there will be hidden so place the design further towards the bottom of the bag for maximum effect.

After you have decided where the design is going pin it to the front side of the fabric. Remember not to pin to the backside too or you are never going to get that ham in!

You now need to change your sewing machine setting to a zigzag stitch that is really tight - I put mine on a 0.7 width, you need to have the stitches close so you don't have raw fabric edges sticking out, and you finish the edge.

Then very very slowly, just go around your shape until you have gone all the way around. The tight turns are tricky but don't get too caught up with them, just keep going slowly and it is simple.

After you have done the first one like this the rest are a breeze. If you are doing the same design as me when you are done, it should look something like this:

Now that you have done the front you need to flip over to the back of the bag and add a tie.

This you do simply by getting the rough middle of the bag and sewing a piece of ribbon or cord close to the top. Again remember to only go though one piece of fabric!

Once you have done that you are up to the part where you join the sides of the bag together.

Flipping the bag sides inside out so that the decorations and the ribbon tie are facing one another you need to sew down the sides of the bag to join them up. If you are the lucky owner of an Overlocker this is the time to break that baby out! If sadly, you are like me, and not the lucky owner of an Overlocker, you will need to zigzag stitch the edges to stop them from fraying.

And you now have a Ham Bag.

You can absolutely stop here if you want to, there is no need to do anything further...... however me being me , I needed to add a little bit of embellishment to it - it just didn't look finished!

So to finish off I made some little bows out of Christmas ribbon and hand stitched them to the top of each of the decorations. This is best done with a needle and thread anything else is too much effort!