Now that Christmas is over and present have been presented I can share one of my little projects. This one was a gift for a very dear friend and very talented sewist.
It was not literally a last minute project… There were still a couple of minutes to go till Christmas… ha, no, only joking. It was made days before Christmas, but it could potentially be a last minute present, if you were in need of a present and didn’t have a lot of time – all hypothetical, of course.
What I love about bags like this is that you always need them. We have accumulated quite a few over the years, but still there is always room for one more. And what I love about this particular bag is that I was able to use stack fabrics and leftover pieces of favourites for the whole project.
Most of the fabrics I used are left from my first quilt, and so are very dear to my heart. I still had a thin blank tote which I used for the lining, and conveniently it already had handles attached to it. So all I needed to do was cut the fabric bits for the outer layer into squares – the size will depend on how large your tote is meant to be, and how much fabric you have. I used nine little squares to make up a big one, then added a longer strip on each end, and a number of odd pieces for a final row all along the top. I pressed all the seams open, and folded and pressed a quarter inch at the top. After putting the prepared lining tote inside the outer layer, I topstitched the seam on top and added another seam about half an inch below for some extra support. Et voila:
