If you missed the first part of this tutorial, please look at it now. It tells you how to cut all the pieces!

Be sure when you sew the sides and bottom together that you leave the cut-out corers untouched. We're not ready for that yet!

Now that you have all of your pieces cut, it’s time to sew it all together. First thing you want to do is choose what pieces will be the lining, and what will be the outer shell. Once you’ve decided that, then take the two pieces for the outside of the tote, put the right sides together, and sew them at the two sides and the bottom, leaving the corners open. Use whatever stitch you like – I used a simple straight stitch, and it’s held up pretty well. But be absolutely sure you leave those corners open – it’s important.

You also want to be sure - in the lining pieces - that you leave a hole in the bottom.

You want to do the same for the lining of the bag as well: place the wrong sides together and sew along the sides and bottom. However, for this part, you want to be sure you leave a hole in the middle of the bottom – this is important too! You want the hole to be roughly big enough to put your balled-up fist into very easily. I usually tie off these threads, simply to add in a little extra strength, but it’s not completely necessary.

Line up the seam at the bag bottom with the seam at the side of the bag, and sew across.

Now you want to box the bottom corners of both “bags”. Basically, you find the side seam of each bag, and line it up with the bottom seam so they meet. You can hold them together or pin them – I avoid pins like the plague, but you don’t have to – and just sew across, closing up the holes and boxing the bottom. (You’ll definitely want to tie off the threads here.) When you hold them up, you should now have two basic bags with boxed bottoms.

Now let’s move to the straps. The iron comes in handy at this point. What you want to do is start by ¹ironing your strip in half, lengthwise; ²opening the fold and then folding the bottom up halfway to the center crease and ³ ironing (do the same for the top); and finally ⁴ fold at the center crease, and iron again to “train” it to go where it’s supposed to. You may choose to pin this shut, but I find ironing it makes it pretty easy, and you don’t have to pin anything.

Sew the straps on both sides.

Now you want to take these nice, ironed pieces and sew them up. I find it makes for a cleaner finish if it sew the center crease side first, and then sew the “open” side (where the edges are folded in) – that way you don’t end up with any weird warping. You want to make the seam as close to the edge as you can get it, just to make it look nice.

Place the lining into the outer shell, right sides together.

Now you need to turn the lining right side out, and slide the lining bag into the outer shell portion – make sure the right sides are together! – and line up the side seams. You can pin them together at this point if you like, but be sure you only pin it at the side seams, since we’re now going to place our straps in the proper position. So you need to decide which side of your strap is the prettiest, and place that side face up in your hand. Now reach between the outer shell and lining and slide the strap down in between the two bags (right side down). Then you want to position the ends, lined up with the tops of the two bags, into place, and pin them (this is the only part I actually use pins for!) Now you want to sew around the entire top of the bag, sewing the handles, lining and outer shell all together.

Place the straps between the lining and the outer shell, and line up the strap ends with the top of the bags. Pin all together and sew around the entire bag top.

At this point, the bag is mostly finished. I like to go and iron my seams flat, and tie up and loose threads. Even though you sew over the loose threads, to me it always seems to give it some “good measure” to just tie them up. Once you’ve got the seams pressed and the threads tied, you’ll want to do the fun part – turning it right-side out. Remember that hole we left in the lining? You want to find it, reach into it and grab your bag, and work it right-side out through this hole. Don’t pull too hard, though! But it should come through just fine and dandy.

After pulling th ebag through the hole in the bottom of your lining, you'll want to close the hole off.

Once you have it all pulled through, you want to return to that hole, push the threads (at the sides) through back to the inside, and hold it closed. Topstitch over the hole to close it up, keeping the thread as close to the edge as you can.

That’s pretty much all there is to it. You can press the seams again if you’d like, and some people like to do topstitching on them for a cleaner look (and maybe a little more strength), but it’s not absolutely necessary. Your finished bag will be beautiful and functional, and it can really carry some heavy items without busting open!