Bird of paradise tote bag

I finished this tote bag at the end of last week so I could present it to my mum. (It has been sitting around cut out for a while).

I used the Two Tone Fabric Totes tutorial, but there are hundreds of tote bag tutorials available. I picked this one as it was lined and turned inside-out for no interior seams.

Both fabrics here are from the Scrapstore – a pretty birds of paradise upholstery print and a plain aqua which is also the lining. Probably both cotton, of reasonable weight. I didn’t add any other embellishment where the fabrics join because I didn’t think it needed it – the print is big enough on its own.

Bit tricky to take good photos as it’s rather larger than the drawstring bags! So I hung it on the wall.

Front:

Back:

To show scale:

And finally:

Those box-and-crosses to reinforce where the handles are attached took a fair bit of oomph from my machine to sew. There’s 6 layers of fabric there once you count the seams inside the handles.

Anyway, I think it turned out very nicely! Will have to make one for me from something. (I don’t have enough of the same print to make another).

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A few more bags

I had been going to write something about these a while ago, but time moves on… These are all Scrapstore fabrics.

Anyway, I had made two goes of patchwork bags. In the first I had the edges just laid over each other and zigzagged over them all, front and back (uses a lot of thread that way!). The second I cut out squares from an upholstery sampler and straight-stitched them together with the seams inside. Not perfectly lined up.

I made a pair of bags in fabric with a car pattern, one red and one blue.

I made the red bag in a different way: the inside and outside made separately, then put together so the top is what you have to sew up rather than leaving a hole in the side for turning. It means the inside seams are all hidden, but that you have a topstitched rim. Not entirely convinced – I like the very clean join at the top of the inside-out way.

I made an alphabet bag and a flowery bag.

I sewed on a pair of pretty wooden butterfly buttons to go with the flowers.