Yesterday, I was cleaning out my drawers. I’ve been trying to finally lose this weight I packed on while having my children, and over the ... read on, Fisherboy »]]> I am continuing on with my obsession of bags. For some unknown reason, I cannot get them out of my head. I’ve mentioned before that I don’t like bags, and typically don’t carry them, so why I’m obsessing over them right now, I cannot figure out. I’e been drawing designs like crazy, and my poor sewing machine is getting a workout.

Yesterday, I was cleaning out my drawers. I’ve been trying to finally lose this weight I packed on while having my children, and over the last couple of months, I’ve been dropping it like there’s no tomorrow. I’ve lost 20 pounds (okay, well almost anyway – 17 to be exact) – as anyone who’s dropped weight will know, losing 5 pounds is roughly equal to one dress size, so I’ve lost basically 4 dress sizes. All of my jeans literally fall off of me when I walk around the house. (Right now I feel like some kind of gangsta because the crotch of my jeans is currently between my knees – but it’s the only clean pair of pants I have in the house at the moment!)

So deep in the bowels of my jeans drawer, not only did I find a few pair of jeans that are amazingly huge (and there’s absolutely no way I will ever wear them again), but I also found a pair of old favorites. They were the jeans I loved to wear while I was preggers with my last child. They were pretty much worn through, but they were a pair of faded jeans with this really pretty design of embroidered flowers on the thigh. I don’t know why I never tossed them, but there they were – and suddenly bing! I had an idea for yet another bag.

I started making this bag yesterday, around lunchtime, and I finished it around 10 hours later. (Hey, I had little ones to take care of and dinner to make!) As with the first bag that sprang from my head, I don’t consider this to be a great work – but I learned a lot in making it. This was the first time I actually properly added a gusset to a bag (the previous attempt was very sad and I made things really hard on myself) – and I realized what I’m doing wrong with the gusset. This bag – as well as the first one – has a gusset that’s too narrow. It keeps tipping over. If this were just a regular run-of-the-mill purse, I think it would be fine. But I need ot keep in mind what I’ll be using these bags for – because in loading them up with yarn and books like I have been… well the gusset just needs to be wider. I run at about a 4″ width, and I’m thinking I need to go up at least double that.

I also added elastic to the inside pockets this time – but I made a mistake: I stretched out the elastic (just a little bit) because I wanted the pockets to always lay flat against the sides. I should NOT have done that. Now the strength of the elastic pulls the sides in, and I think this contributes to the bag tipping over because the strength to hold it up is compromised. (I have noticed, though, when I stuff the pockets full of junk, it seems to regain it’s balance a little better.) What I should have done was make the elastic exactly the same width as the bag, and made the pocket wide, so it could expand if it needed to.

And finally, I’ve learned that – at least in this case – when I want to do “gathers”, I don’t need to cut the pieces at an angle. The cut pieces for the front and back were all triangle-shaped, because I wanted the light-colored sections to “poof and gather”, and it would result in a triangular shape. However, by cutting the pieces in triangles, i ended up making it quite a bit flatter than intended, and there’s definitely no “poof”. What I should have done is cut the dark pieces as triangles (like I did) and left the light-colored fabric as regular rectangles, and allow the “gathering” to straighten out the sides and create “poof”.

Other than that, though, I really like how this turned out. (You’ll see the “needle roll” I made out of leftover fabric in the second picture – I also saved the pockets to sew together to make a notions bag – that’s not in the picture though.) I’m definitely learning a lot from all of this “trial and error.”

But I’m still trying to figure out what I’m going to do with all of these bags I’m making! Maybe I should start having giveaways or something…

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 ... read on, Fisherboy »]]> 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!

So if you didn’t read on, Fisherboy »]]> 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!

Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t “tree huggers” either – but I do think we try ... read on, Fisherboy »]]> So, we recently discovered that our local grocery store would give us money off our grocery bill if we brought in our own bags to stuff our purchases in. Now, we’re pretty good at “going green” – we recycle and it’s pretty much habit now to separate our trash as we go along, we carpool, and we try to remain conscientious about what we’re doing to reduce our carbon footprint and output.

Don’t get me wrong, we aren’t “tree huggers” either – but I do think we try more than your average bear.

But grocery bags never were something we really put much thought into. We usually go for paper bags (I know, they cut down trees to make them – but at least they are recyclable in more ways than one), but we do have a stash of the icky plastic ones. Then my hubby found out about the $ off if we bring our own bags.

So, I started looking for ideas on what to do. The ones the grocery store offered for sale were…well let’s face it. They’re butt-ugly. And small. We would have to buy twice as many bags as we would normally use to make up for what we get. I’ve been sewing since I was a kid, so hey, I decided to make them.

After a bit of planning, I found this tutorial on making a nice, lined grocery tote bag. It was an excellent tutorial, however, the bag ended up pretty small, and quite frankly, the gussets and seams were pretty thick. At first, I thought it was the fabric I was using – but I used basically two very old pillowcases I had lying around – standard “quilting fabric” thickness. The lady on that tutorial actually used a heavier weight fabric – so I couldn’t imagine it.

The "normal" side of the bag, as defined by my husband.

But I liked the idea.

So what I did was take apart one of our paper grocery bags to use as the basis of the pattern. After that, it was basically nothing more than sewing straight lines – it was pretty darn quick to blow through, actually. Initially, I thought it would be too heavy (again with the huge, thick seams) but I had already purchased the fabric and we figured it couldn’t hurt to go ahead and see what happened. What happened was a very sturdy bag. I wanted to used felled seams, but ended up just using a straight stitch. We tested the strength by loading up every canned good we had in the house (and we had a LOT) into the bag and lifted it, swung it around, etc. to see what would happen – and nothing. It held fast without the handles or bottom seam tearing out.

The "wrong side" of the bag, as defined by my husband (presumably
because it's "too girly")

As you can see, though, it’s a nice bag. I bought fabric that had different patterns, but were complimentary to each other. It’s fully reversible so you can decide which pattern you want on the outside and which on the inside, and when (or if) they get dirty, we can just toss them in the wash.

I’m about to make 5 or 6 more of these puppies, and since this one turned out so well, I thought perhaps I’d share how I did it so you all can benefit from it, too. So I’ll follow up later after I’ve made some more (and this time, I’ll take pictures along the way so some of the stuff I describe will have visuals to help explain) and then post the full “how to” when it’s all ready. I’ve posted Step One of the Tutorial already! But I just wanted to show it off, because it really did turn out very nicely!