mountain of bags

I joined a preschool activity swap a few weeks ago.

Here's how it works:

Everyone is assigned an activity that a preschooler can do on his/her own

while momma is busy doing school with the bigger kids.

Everyone makes 20 sets of their one activity.

Then we all get together and swaps activities,

giving 20 kids

20 different 

self-directed activities.

pretty sweet, huh?

My assignment

 was to gather a tumbler and 12 - 20 plastic colored clothespins

for twenty activity bags.

I'm supposed to draw a face on the cup

so that the kiddos can not only have a

 'drop the clothespin in the cup' game

but a 'make funny hair for the face' game, too

by clipping the pins around the rim of the cup.

I ran all over town choosing just the right tumblers

and collecting enough clothespins.

15 seemed like a perfect amount for the cups I bought.

That's 300 clothespins!

When I got home from shopping

instead of putting all my activity sets together
 like I should have done

I started thinking,

"Where are these little kids going to put all those clothespins

while they're playing with them - when they're not in the cup?"

So I decided I had to make them all 

little drawstring bags to hold the pins.

I would have liked to have made these with cute fabric

but decided to go with something I already had

so I cut twenty notebook-paper sized pieces from 

an old sheet I'd used to make a muslin for some pants for Ton'.

Now, these bags are admittedly small at 4 1/2 x 6 1/2

but they're perfect for little hands and this project.

I accidentally made 21 instead of 20

and let me tell you

that one extra bag is a hot commodity!

Once cut, these only took 5 minutes each to make

so even though I made a buttload - it didn't take too long.

(Lana has always wondered - how much, exactly, is a buttload?)

I simply folded  and ironed the top (one of the long sides) down 1/4" or so

and then folded it down again maybe 3/4" 

then I unfolded the second fold, but left the first one

and sewed down the side and across the bottom

leaving a bit of an opening for my drawstring

just a tiny bit past that second crease

Then I clipped the bottom corners

re-folded the top that I'd ironed down earlier

and did a row of stitching along the top of the bag

 and another just a bit below that 

to create a casing for the ribbon.

I threaded ribbon through the hole I'd left in the side 

when I sewed it up which - if in the right spot -

was perfectly centered between my two rows of stitching.

Now that I've got that out of my system

I need to put together the requested activity.....