Personalised Rag Tags from Jeans - a Tutorial

This year for school I bought my daughters stainless steel water bottles. They are great to use instead of the plastic ones and the girls love the shiny colours!

I needed to find a way to label them - and noticing a small hole in the lid I decided to make small key-chain tags for them - which can also be put on bags, keys, pencil cases, anything really!

I've been wanting to have a go at rag quilting for a while now - and I thought this technique would look good on the little tags!

They're really simple to make - here's how...

First gather your materials.

I used some old jeans, scraps of coloured fabric, fusible webbing and keychains.

Cut the fusible webbing into small rectangles and iron to the back of your coloured fabric. 

Cut rectangles of denim from the jeans for your tags. 2 rectangles for each tag.  For the loop to hold the keychain, cut the belt loops or the double side seams from the jeans.

To add the letters to your tags. Draw the letter backwards on the paper side of the fusible webbing. Cut the letter out, peel off the paper backing and place centrally on the front of your tag. Then cover with a damp cloth and iron to fix into place.

Then either use the applique setting on your machine, or a tight zigzag stitch to secure the letter in place.

Now for the keyring.  Take a piece of belt loop or side seam and loop through a keychain ring.  Fold in half, and place between the two rectangles of your tag at the top. Make sure the right sides of the fabric are facing outwards. Machine stitch around all 4 sides.

Run a few lines of extra stitching backwards and forwards over the loop holding the keyring in place - to secure a little stronger!

Now for the rag look for your tag.

Snip all around the edges of the outer seam of your tag.

Then fold, scrunch and rub the tag in your hands.

It's best to do this outside as a lot of fluff will fly off the tag!

To rag the tag even more, place the tag inside a pillowcase in your washing machine - and wash!

Once they're washed, take them out give them a good shake (and the pillowcase too which will be full of fluff!) and dry.

Then your tags are ready to attach to your keys, bags, bottles or whatever you choose!

They will continue to 'rag' more as they are used!

For the downloadable PDF version of this tutorial, click here.

I hope you liked this tutorial. 

There are over 100 more free sewing tutorials for all levels of sewing ability on my tutorials page too - please do take a look!