Making a wet bag

A wet bag is always useful to put wet diapers/trainers in while you are out and about or to use in your diaper pail to make for easy clean up. If you make the wet bag from PUL you can throw it into the washer and dryer along with your diapers and have it nice and clean to be used again for the next outing. Other materials suitable for a wet bag: fleece, 100% wool (lanolized), or rip stop nylon.

Here are instructions to construct your own wet bag from PUL, a shoe lace and a toggle.

Download pattern. Some download times are long.
Here is a large version of the pattern. The great thing about this pattern is that you can easily make it any size. By increasing or decreasing the width or height of the pattern (in the middle of the pattern) you can tailor the size of your wet bag to your needs. You can make it fit a large diaper pail or a small diaper bag. The downloadable pattern is small because this was the easiest to digitalize, to make a larger version just add inches to the center of the pattern through the width and height.
Here I'm showing how I folded the pattern over to make the width smaller. If your pattern is made out of paper you can simply cut it in half, remove a small amount, and tape the edges back together.
Here I made the height smaller by folding the pattern twice as I did with the width.
I've cut the pattern out of PUL, the pattern is cut on the fold, make sure you read the pattern markings to insure you put the correct side of the pattern on the fold so that the seam allowance allows for the bag to symmetrical.

Fold the wet bag along the fold line with right sides together. Pin along the two long raw edges and sew with a straight stitch and a 1/4" seam allowance. IMPORTANT: Do NOT sew the top 3 1/2" at the top of the long seam of the wet bag.

Hint: I know at other times I've said not to use pins with PUL (and you certainly don't have to when you make your wet bag) but I find it much easier in this case and since I don't plan on filling my wet bag with water, a few pin holes along the edges makes no difference.
Pull the bottom of the bag in opposite directions (see red arrows) to bring the bottom seams together. Pin and sew each seam with a straight stitch and 1/4" seam allowance. The seams will have diagonal ends (its designed that way, don't worry you did it right!), make sure you sew right to the very edge or over a little, so that the corners will be sharp.
Turn your iron on hot and lay your wet bag on your ironing board with the top edge facing away from you. Open the top seam that you didn't sew and fold it flat along the seam allowance.
Lay some parchment paper right over the seam and place your iron on top, leave it for 15 seconds.

PUL has this amazing quality that it permanently sticks to itself when ironed with the shiny sides touching!

Hint: I'm too afraid to lay my iron right on the shiny side of the PUL but you are welcome to try:) I'm sure other things would work if you didn't have parchment paper. Wax paper, regular paper...?
Removed the iron and the parchment paper to find a nice, permanently folded edge.
Fold over the raw edge (top) of the wet bag by 1/4" and then 1" to form a casing for your drawstring. Sew along the edge of your fold with a straight stitch as close to the fold as possible.
Take a shoelace ($1.23 for two 36" shoelaces at Walmart) and put a safety pin in the end. Feed it through one end of the casing all the way around to the other side.
Grab both ends and put them inside a toggle (two holed, bought at Joann's), tie a knot at the very end of the shoe laces so the toggle can't come off. Now you have a complete wet bag!

Making a wet bag to fit a particular container

I've really been getting tired of washing out my diaper pails so I decided to make some PUL diaper pail wet bags. That way I can just throw the wet bag into the wash with the diapers and only wash the actual pail, once and a while. The containers I use for diaper pails are actually used Milkbone containers. We don't have a dog but I collected a whole bunch from my friend Tara. Really anything can be a diaper pail that is plastic and has a lid that fits securely.
In order to find the size of the bottom of your wet bag, trace the bottom of the container onto thick paper or cardboard (using a paper bag is great).

My diaper pail actually gets bigger going from bottom to top but I really didn't feel like figuring out the difference in the sizes and then how to make the sides so that they fit on the slight diagonal....so I just traced the larger size (the top) and therefore the wet bag will be a bit bunchy inside (no big deal!).

Take the tracing and add 1/2" all the way around so that the top of the wet bag will fold over the top of the diaper pail and be easy to take on and off.

Hint: Use a quilter's ruler (it's clear) and line it up with the straight part of the tracing.
In order to add rounded corners to your larger pattern you could just free-hand-it or you can use something round like a Tupperware cup and line it up with the sides of the pattern.
Here is my final pattern for the bottom of the pail cut out. In order to find out how much PUL is needed for the sides of the wet bag take a string and run it all the way around the outside of the pattern. Keep your finger pinching the string where it met up with the beginning and measure the length of string with your ruler. This is the exact size of the bottom of the pail. Now take that value and add 1/2" (2 X 1/4" seam allowances).

For example: My bottom pattern measured at 41 1/4" around but the final width of PUL that I cut for the sides of the wet bag was 41 3/4".
Measure from top to bottom of the pail to find out how deep to make the wet bag. Add 3 " to account for the 1/4" seam allowance for sewing the sides to the bottom, the drawstring/elastic casing, and enough fabric for the bag to fold over the pail.

For example: I measured the pail to be 15" but I cut my PUL 19" deep. Therefore, I cut a piece of PUL that was 41 3/4" x 19" for the sides of the wet bag.
Cut out the bottom pattern by laying it on the PUL, tracing around, and cutting.

Hint: Lay a book on top of the pattern to ensure it does not shift while tracing.

To cut the larger piece of PUL, for the sides of the wet bag, lay the PUL on the ground and flatten it out, smooth out any wrinkles. Line up your quilter's ruler with the uncut edge since you know this is perfectly straight. Measure and draw the large rectangle right onto the PUL and cut it out.
Take the large rectangle and fold it with right sides together. Sew a straight stitch seam with a 1/4" seam allowance. DO NOT sew the last 3" of the seam. See making a wet bag for the explanation and ironing technique.

Hint: Generally the shiny side of PUL is the "wrong" side but if you are making this bag to be strictly a diaper pail wet bag you might want to make the PUL the right side so that the seams are hidden when the bag is in the pail. I didn't do this in case I wanted to use the wet bag for other purposes in the future.
Now that you have ironed your opening you can fold over the raw edge by 1" to form the drawstring casing. Pin and sew with a straight stitch.

After stitching around, feed in the drawstring and place a toggle on the end. See making a wet bag for the explanation.

Hint: you might want to feed through an elastic so that the wet bag can just hug the opening of the pail if you don't plan on using this bag for anything else.

Hint: You could fold under the raw edge so that it is hidden but I didn't bother to do this with this wet bag (PUL doesn't fray so it doesn't make a difference). If you do fold under the raw edge you might want to add 1/4" to the depth of the wet bag to account for this.
In order to pin the bottom to the sides of the bag, first fold the bottom PUL piece in half and mark the halfway point (not shown). With right sides together, line up the middle marking with the vertical seam up the side of the wet bag (this is so the bottom is centered properly).

Pin all the way around, use lots of pins, especially at the corners. You may have to fiddle with it a bit to get the sides to be evenly distributed all the way around but keep fiddling until the sides lay flat with very little bunching. Now sew all the way around, with a 1/4" seam allowance and a straight stitch; go slow and watch to prevent puckering.

Hint: You might want to reinforce this seam by sewing another straight stitch seam 1/8" outside of the original seam (on the seam allowance).
Here is the inside of the finished bag.
And here is the outside.
Here is the bag inside the diaper pail.

You can use these instructions to make a wet bag for any shape of container, really the pattern of the bottom piece determines the shape of the wet bag. If the pail has a round bottom the bottom pattern piece will be round and the sides will be sewn from a similar rectangle as with this diaper pail.