A friend's birthday is fast approaching. I had some lovely brown & cream (Windham fabrics; Modern Grace from Moe 3 by Jackie Shapiro #26166) and pink fabric left over from the last singlet style shopping bag I made for another friend's birthday, and so I decided I'd make another one. I'm really won over by the pattern - I've made quite a few, because they're so comfortable to carry heavy loads with.
I carefully cut out the pattern pieces... concentrating so hard that I failed to notice that I'd set the wrong side of my template along the seam. Despair descended, followed by a quick search through my crafty "to-do" bookmarks folder. I dug up cindylou's tutorial for a simple reversible totebag and sewbunny's tutorial for a market tote, realising that I could easily salvage the pattern pieces I'd already cut out.
I decided to follow cindylou's tutorial, but went for one long strap like in sewbunny's example.
After sewing the outer fabric and the lining pieces, I decided I absolutely needed an inside pocket, using the method from craftster.org's singlet style shopping bag. I undid half of the stitching on the lining, but impatience at the end resulted in my thread picker cutting a little hole in the lining. More despair followed. I ended up just bringing in the side seam a few cms, and then had to do the same on the outer fabric.
From then on in, everything went smoothly, boxed bottom and all!
I love the fact that the bag's reversible! The fabric I chose isn't really reversible though (hot pink... hehe...)
But it does mean that there's a pocket inside the bag for storing keys/a purse/wallet etc and as a bonus the bag can be turned inside out and then packed into its own nifty little pouch.
I'm glad I didn't give up every time I made a seemingly show-stopping mistake... it turned out quite nicely. I hope she likes the bold colours!
Related post: Matching zipper pouch and tissue holder
No comments:
Post a Comment