I found this great “I Spy” bag and tutorial on Pinterest.  Pinterest has got to be  the best site!  I wanted to share with you the “I Spy” bag that I made.  You can find the tutorial that I used here.

When I saw this project I thought that it would be a great idea for a nice and quiet game for the kids to play, espeically in the car or in a waiting room.  I used a firefighter themed fleece for my bags.

I used pinking shears when I cut out the centers of the windows. When I used the clear plastic for the window I ended up cutting a slightly larger piece than what was suggested.  I found that the plastic kept slipping on me and I had to rip it out a couple of times and use extra pins.  Between the fleece and the plastic everything slipped more than I realized so it made that part of  the project a bit longer to complete but I finally finished the windows. When I was done sewing in the plastic I just trimmed the edges off of the plastic about 1/8″ before the seam.

Once I had the window of the bag finished I sewed on the back pocket and then I sewed the bag closed, except for a spot for turning it right side out.

The next step is to add the rice. In one bag I used brown rice and the other bag I used pearl barley. It was close to grocery shopping day and I was running low on my white rice so I had to get a bit creative. I have seen online that you can order clear plastic pellets to use as a non-food alternative. The tutorial says to fill the bag up 1/2 way with rice and then add the objects. I filled it up a little better than 1/2 way and it was too much. It made the top stitching very difficult. I ended up sewing into a grain of rice and it broke my needle!

Before I placed the objects to find in the bag I took a picture of them. The tutorial suggests doing this and then getting the picture laminated. This allows the child to use a dry erase marker and check off the items as they find it. I still have to get my picture laminated though.

In the end the bag turned out very cute. I wish that I would have only filled up each bag 1/2 way withthe  rice as the tutorial suggests because, besides making it difficult to topstitch, it almost seems to be too much in the bag. When you first pour the rice in the bag it doesn’t look like much but once the bag is sewn closed and the child uses it, that 1/2 bag filled with rice goes a long way to hide the objects.

I really enjoyed this tutorial and the boys loved their “I Spy” bags. I may make more of these bags yet for gifts. Such a great and simple project!