Tutorial - How to use Eyelets in your bags

Eyelets are a great for adding lacing decorative ribbons, lacing, or fabric ties onto your bags. And you can use eyelets to attach metal rings, or make professional looking drawstring closures.  For example, Lisa has decorated one of her bags with eyelets and lacing, yum!  Eyelet kits provide everything you need including instructions for use, but I thought it might be handy for some of you if made this photo tutorial to show you how easy peasy they are to use.

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Here's what you get inside an eyelet kit from left to right: hammer plate, hammer post, eyelet shaft, eyelet plate.  What you'll also need is a hammer.

1.   Make a hole for the eyelet - Make up your bag, and mark the desired position of the eyelet/s.  Now make a small hole for the eyelet shaft, in your bag.  Make the hole only just large enough for the er...shaft  (heh!) to pass through; it should be a tight fit or the eyelet won't be able to grip onto the fabric, and it will all go tragically wrong.

Take your time to cut a small hole and test to see if the eyelet shaft will fit thru the hole.

2.  Apply eyelet shaft to bag - take eyelet shaft and push it thru the right side of your bag.

This is the shaft part of the eyelet shaft poking thru the wrong side of my bag (in this case, my bag lining).

This is a pic of the right side of my bag: get some heavy cloth to protect the table, and place the hammer plate just underneath the eyelet shaft.

3.   Apply eyelet plate and get your hammer out - slip the eyelet plate over the eyelet shaft and trim any stray bits of fabric if necessary.

Pic is of wrong side of my bag:  slip eyelet plate over the eyelet shaft, ensure the eyelet plate is right side up as shown in pic.

Next place the hammer post onto the eyelet shaft as shown.  The hammer post is shaped in such a way as to make the eyelet shaft roll back on itself (thus creating a lip which will hold both of the eyelet halves to together) when you tap it with a hammer.

Get your hammer out and whack the hammer post with several sharp taps (rather than a couple of hard thumps which might split the eyelet shaft), and hey presto a professional looking eyelet!

Finished result : right side.

Finished result: wrong side.

I'll show you what my bag with eyelets looks like in my next post...::UPDATE:: Here it is.