As promised, I’m here to deliver my first sewing tutorial, to show you how I made my reversible grocery tote bag. This entry is just the first in a (small) series of posts on the matter. I’m doing it in steps for two reasons: 1) I think it breaks things up a little more to make it easier to follow and 2) I have little ones at home, and they only let me do a little bit at a time.

So if you didn’t read the original post on this tote, as Inigo Montoya said once: “Let me ‘splain. No, wait – too much. Let me sum up.” A while back, I was looking for a nice reusable grocery bag pattern, and found this one, but when I sewed it up, it came out really small. (NOTE: I don’t blame the original author – I blame my Mad Skillz, and the fact that I hadn’t sewn anything in quite some time.) I liked the idea of taking an existing, working bag and turning it into a pattern to make reusable fabric bags from – and since we always use the large paper bags anyway, I decided to steal her idea and cut up a paper bag instead.

So with that in mind, you need the following items to make up your quickie tote:

• Fabric of your choice (I used about 1/2 yard each of 2 different fabric patterns, medium weight cotton; and some scrap canvas for the handle)
• Scissors
• A sewing machine
• Thread
• Iron and Ironing Board (okay, ironing board is optional – if you don’t have one, just fold a towel in half and lay it on the floor to iron on – an old college trick I used to do )
• Pins are helpful, but not required
• An old paper grocery bag
• An old sheet or pillowcase, or blank pattern paper.
• A sharpie (or other marker)
• A ruler (optional, but very helpful)
• Interfacing (optional – I didn’t use it, but I’ll ‘splain why you might want it later)

I’ll start by saying this is actually mega-super-easy to sew up. However, as I said, I hadn’t sewn anything in a long time, and (as is typical of me) the first time I put this together I royally screwed the pooch. I had to rip it apart twice and start over. But once you do it the first time, believe me, it’s all downhill from there. So really, I think anyone who can drive and follow a straight line can do this – it really is that easy (and since I’m explaining what I did step-by-step, then you will learn from my mistakes, and hopefully you won’t make them.)

Cut the Bag and Create Your Pattern

Find the center seam on the wide side of the bag, and cut about 1/2 to 1 inch to the left of it.

So the first thing you want to do is grab your scissors and the paper bag. You want to lay it on its side, so the wide side with the seam is facing up. When you locate the seam, you want to cut about 1/2 – to 1 inch to the left of the seam (to make for the seam allowance when you sew), and cut all the way down and through the bottom. You don’t need to cut all the way around the bag, but you can if it makes you feel better. But you basically want to follow this line down one side, and through the middle of the bottom piece.

Find the center fold of the narrow side, and cut 1/2 to 1 inch to the right of the fold.

Now, turn the bag so the narrow side (to the right of the side you were cutting) is facing up. You want to find the center fold of this side (it folds inward), and place your scissors 1/2 to 1 inch to the right of the fold. Continue to cut along this path through to the bottom, until you meet the previous cut at a 90° angle.

The corner you just cut - you want to now cut along the bottom seam.

Now what you should have what looks like the tall corner of a box. You now want to find the spot where the sides meets the bottom piece to form the corner, and cut along that seam. (If you’re not positive where I mean, look at the little picture there and there’s a red arrow showing you the line to cut and in what direction). Now you’ll end up with a big rectangle that has the corner cut out.

This is what you should have after you've cut the bag up and laid it flat.

This is now your base pattern. You’ve already got your seam allowances included here – except where the bottom corner is cut out. Now, This is where your old piece of fabric comes in (I used an old crib sheet for this). Personally, I hate pattern paper. The stuff drives me nuts. But if you like it, by all means, use it. But trying to pin a paper bag to fabric is a nightmare, so transferring it to something more…. “pliable” will make your life easier, as well as make for better storage.

So whip out the old sheet (or whatever) and lay the piece of bag on it. You want to cut around the bag – but when you get to the corner piece, you want to expand your line there by about 1/2 to 1 inch to make for the seam allowance there. (I like to do 1 inch, because it gives me “mess up” room to play with. If you don’t need that much room, no big deal, because it gets trimmed back anyway – but as my mom always told me, “you can always take away, but you can’t put it back.”)

The end result of your pattern piece.

I like to use my sharpie to write notes on the pattern – so I marked where the fold should go (on the longest side of the piece), and I put notes on the whole project on this. (After I took this picture, I added more notes, but I’ll get to that in a minute.)

This is pretty much the only pattern piece you’re going to need. If you so desire, you can cut a rectangle to go with this that is 35 inches long by 4 inches wide, and save it along with this bit. I do not desire, so I did not. Instead, I just added a note to my existing pattern piece that I needed to cut 2 rectangles that were 35 inches long by 4 inches wide (for the handles – you can make them shorter if you like, but I wouldn’t want to go any less than 18 inches long, unless you don’t care that you can’t lug it over your shoulder). Now if I ever make this again, I’ll know what I need

Now we’re going to get to the good stuff.

Cut the Actual Fabric Pieces

As with any preparation, you need to set out your fabric and fold it as you like to cut it properly. If you’re using a fabric that’s a solid color, or has a pattern that can go any which way, then by all means, lay it out any way it fits and cut. In my case, the fabric I chose has a vertical pattern, so I had to be more careful as to how I cut mine.

Because this repeating pattern on the fabric only goes one way, I had to be very careful as to where I cut my corners.

Now, my stripes weren’t any real big deal – they were vertical stripes, but as long as I didn’t hold them sideways, it didn’t matter which end as up or down (stripes only stripe one way!) However, the floral pattern was another matter – the way the pattern is set up on it, the fabric could only face one direction. If I just “went with it” then the floral pattern would be upside-down on one side of the tote. So the vertical stripes, I went ahead and cut out as usual – but for the floral pattern, I cut it square. Then I pulled apart the two pieces, rotated one of them 180° (so the pattern was running in the same direction), and then I cut out the corners. That way I could be sure my pieces were all running in the same direction, and would play nice.

This is the point where I cut out my handle pieces from the canvas. Now, I mentioned in the “list of things you’d need” up there that interfacing was optional. The reason I say this is because a lot of people like to place interfacing in their handles to make them strong and sturdy. So if the fabric you’re using is something like quilting cotton, then yes, please cut two pieces of interfacing to match your two cut handles. In my case, I used a strong canvas – so there’s really no need for interfacing. I could, but I don’t plan on carrying around any elephants in these things, so it’s really not necessary when you’re using something as strong (and heavy) as canvas.

So if you’ve decided to use interfacing, feel free to apply it as necessary. I like the “iron on” kind, but if you used sew-in… well just place the interfacing on the wrong side of the handles and pin.

Here's all of my cut pieces, laid out for you to see. I folded over the floral pattern piece so you could see how I did a 180 on one side to make sure the pattern was going the right way before I cut the corners.

So really, that’s all there is to it. These are the pieces that are cut to create the bag (of course, as mentioned, no interfacing. If you’re using it, just imagine it there ) That’s all the prep you need to do. Next, I’ll show you how to put the bag together. Of course, at this point, all I’ve done myself is cut the pieces to show you how to do it, and my son just got home from school – so it might be a little bit before I put in part 2!

Part II: Sew It Up!