In my quest for the perfect bags, which seems to be a never-ending quest, I have been looking at plenty of styles and sizes, and learning a lot along the way! My sister was kind enough to provide to me an overflowing box of upholstery fabrics she found while cleaning up and clearing out during their move. Not only did my cats love acquiring so much free fabric, I did too! I love using upholstery fabric for bags of all sorts, and jackets too, like this one.
So using my Graphics App, I drew up my plans for another tote bag, smaller than my last one, and went through the upholstery fabric box to find the perfect fabric to repurpose into a tote bag.
I pulled out my Singer 421G for this heavy duty job. I used a lightweight fusible interfacing on my inner lining fabric to add a bit of shape and a fusible fleece on my outer fabric to add a bit of soft cushioning and shape.
Fusible fleece – and a peek at the striped fabric I chose from the upholstery fabric box!
Let’s breeze through making the zipper pocket in my inner lining.
Next my zipper flaps were made with my outer fabric.
Bag lining pieces were sewn together.
Outer fabric pieces sewn together, corners drawn in and sewn.
Strap tabs were made and attached to my outer bag.
Inner lining and outer bag were sewn together and topstitched.
Then I had my doubts – these rings are not one piece. Would I they be able to hold the weight of a laptop?
Presto chango! I unpicked the original tabs and sewed in new D ring ones.
The adjustable bag strap is made. It can be shortened or lengthened to my wishes.
My finished tote bag!
I think I quite possibly have enough of this striped fabric for a small crossbody bag! I’ll have to draw one up!
I’ll have to apologize in advance and just press “publish” and hope for the best! It appears that WordPress doesn’t like this post. While drafting, every time I looked at the post another slide show would disappear, when I pressed “preview” it was really there, but in the draft it had disappeared. I will come back periodically and check if all three slide shows are still visible – but let me know too if things vanish, ok?
Happy Sewing!
STASH BUSTING WITH THIS PROJECT? None yet! Still 136.5 metres remaining. This project was made with repurposed fabrics and notions.