Chicken Feed Bag Zipper Pouch

When you have chickens, one of the things you end up with a lot of are feed bags!  It seems a shame to toss them in the trash, so over the next couple of weeks, I will be posting two fun projects that are a perfect way to repurpose those bags!

First up is the Chicken Feed Bag Zipper Pouch!  This is a quick project and would be a great gift for the chicken lover in your life!  This pouch is assembled the same way as in the original zipper pouch tutorial, but the feed bag is the material for the outer fabric, and you can choose any fabric you like for the inside.  The above tutorial will walk you through step by step on how to make a zipper pouch, but here is how I got started with the feed bags:

1. Clean your Feed Bags – there will likely be residue on the inside of the bags that need to be cleaned out before you do any sewing!  I find it helpful to first cut off the top and the bottom of the bags:

Then I take the hose and really rinse them out and then set them out to dry until they are completely dry.

 

2. Cut your pieces for the exterior of your bag – you can use the pattern pieces for my original zipper pouch tutorial found here to cut out your two exterior pieces.  I found parts of the bags I wanted to use, placed my pattern over them and traced them out (known as “fussy cutting” in the quilting world). I picked a big ol’ chicken head for one side and a cute picture of grazing chickens for the other.

 

3. Cut your interior pieces – I chose some red polka dot cotton fabric I had lying around for the inside.  So now you should have two interior fabric pieces and two exterior pieces from your feed bags.  (Note: because the feed bag material is fairly stiff, you do not need to include the fusible fleece as in the original zipper pouch tutorial.)

4. Assemble the zipper pouch – if you need a little more help assembling your zipper pouch, the post here will walk you through the whole thing! (The only difference is you will not do Step 4 because you do not need any fusible fleece!)  Probably the trickiest part will be at the end when you are having to flip the pouch right side around. Just go slowly and carefully! You may feel like you have to crumple the feed bag to get it to flip around and that is ok – it is pretty tough so it will be able to handle a certain amount of poking and tugging.  A turning tool (or as we call it in my classes a “pokey stick” aka chopstick) will be really helpful here – just poke carefully!!!

And that is all there is to it!  It makes a unique item that is a great way to repurpose and recycle something that would otherwise be tossed in the trash!

The next feed bag project coming up is a Feed Bag Reusable Tote Bag, so stay tuned! 🙂

 

Happy Sewing!!!

   ~Jamie