Shopping Bag for Mum's Birthday
I got some fabric from my favourite seller on TradeMe, with the intention mostly of using it for crafty things like bags, because sometimes it just doesn't work making clothes out of "fun" fabrics. I asked Mum which she liked, so that when I got round to making bags, I could whip one up for her too. Then, it was a couple of days before her birthday so I thought I'd make it to put her presents in.
I started out trying to make a pattern from what I remembered of a bag I saw on the internet, but it wasn't working, and it didn't really seem actually possible. I booted up my computer and went and actually looked at her bag, and it was in fact different from what I had been trying to make. So the pattern for THAT bag, was obvious, and what I was trying to do had in fact been impossible after all. I try to make a lot of impossible things. It's annoying. I need a different type of material to make stuff out of. Anyway, the site in question is this one. I basically followed what she did, as far as I can tell - I only skimmed through her instructions looking for really obvious important tips. I like instructions, but I mostly find them difficult to understand or remember unless they're written a certain way. My bag is a slightly different size, slightly different dimensions, but fairly similar, as there's pretty much only one useful size for a bag like this.
Here's the finished bag, empty and with presents and cake decorations in it :) As you can see it has little sheep on the outer fabric, and flowers on the inner fabric, and there is a button and loop as well that you probably can't see. The button I actually got from Mum, probably when I was a kid, as a random spare button for my sewing box.
One thing that is cool that you should look at on the original website is how she made the curved corners; rather than putting them on the pattern and ending up with a kind of weird curve to sew, you sew it square, and then sew across the corner in a curve and cut off the excess. At least, that's what I think she was doing - that's what I did in my interpretation of what she did.
Here's my corner; on the left is the side of the bag, at the bottom is the bottom of the bag. I sewed that curved corner in as you can see, and then I trimmed along about half a centimeter from the stitching.
Here's the pockets in mine. You should generally sew any pockets first, but in this case, since the pockets go over a seam line, you need to sew that seam first, then put the pockets on. In any case, you should generally try to get pockets, and similar details, on as soon as you can. My pockets are a bit small to be truly useful, but they were the biggest pieces of vaguely matching scrap fabric that I had - the first pocket is that shape purely to get more pocket out of an oddly shaped piece of fabric. However, it is always useful to have pockets in things, just in case.
Tip - make pockets out of a fabric that you can iron creases into and that stays folded. Otherwise, it's a real pain trying to fold the edges under and sew them down, and you have to use tonnes of pins, and it slips around, and you sew it wrong and have to do it again. Much easier to be able to iron them firmly under and not have to worry.
Looking at the instructions again - she apparently left a gap at the bottom of the lining to turn inside out; I sewed lining and outer together, right sides together, all the way around except the strap tops and turned it through those (don't make the straps narrow if you want to do this!). I also machine sewed the straps together up putting one end into the other and then sewing through all layers - but hand sewing is way nicer. My sister was not complimentary about the effect of my method as it is difficult to get something nicely inside something else when they are the same size. If I do another I'll taper one bag strap very slightly at the end so it fits in without bubbling. I wanted to see if that was a good method to get an efficient entirely machine sewn process for making the bags. I also sewed my button loop onto the finished bag rather than enclosing the ends between the layers because I wasn't going to put it on at first, so when I decided to it was too late to do any differently.
I started out trying to make a pattern from what I remembered of a bag I saw on the internet, but it wasn't working, and it didn't really seem actually possible. I booted up my computer and went and actually looked at her bag, and it was in fact different from what I had been trying to make. So the pattern for THAT bag, was obvious, and what I was trying to do had in fact been impossible after all. I try to make a lot of impossible things. It's annoying. I need a different type of material to make stuff out of. Anyway, the site in question is this one. I basically followed what she did, as far as I can tell - I only skimmed through her instructions looking for really obvious important tips. I like instructions, but I mostly find them difficult to understand or remember unless they're written a certain way. My bag is a slightly different size, slightly different dimensions, but fairly similar, as there's pretty much only one useful size for a bag like this.
Here's the finished bag, empty and with presents and cake decorations in it :) As you can see it has little sheep on the outer fabric, and flowers on the inner fabric, and there is a button and loop as well that you probably can't see. The button I actually got from Mum, probably when I was a kid, as a random spare button for my sewing box.
One thing that is cool that you should look at on the original website is how she made the curved corners; rather than putting them on the pattern and ending up with a kind of weird curve to sew, you sew it square, and then sew across the corner in a curve and cut off the excess. At least, that's what I think she was doing - that's what I did in my interpretation of what she did.
Here's my corner; on the left is the side of the bag, at the bottom is the bottom of the bag. I sewed that curved corner in as you can see, and then I trimmed along about half a centimeter from the stitching.
Here's the pockets in mine. You should generally sew any pockets first, but in this case, since the pockets go over a seam line, you need to sew that seam first, then put the pockets on. In any case, you should generally try to get pockets, and similar details, on as soon as you can. My pockets are a bit small to be truly useful, but they were the biggest pieces of vaguely matching scrap fabric that I had - the first pocket is that shape purely to get more pocket out of an oddly shaped piece of fabric. However, it is always useful to have pockets in things, just in case.
Tip - make pockets out of a fabric that you can iron creases into and that stays folded. Otherwise, it's a real pain trying to fold the edges under and sew them down, and you have to use tonnes of pins, and it slips around, and you sew it wrong and have to do it again. Much easier to be able to iron them firmly under and not have to worry.
Looking at the instructions again - she apparently left a gap at the bottom of the lining to turn inside out; I sewed lining and outer together, right sides together, all the way around except the strap tops and turned it through those (don't make the straps narrow if you want to do this!). I also machine sewed the straps together up putting one end into the other and then sewing through all layers - but hand sewing is way nicer. My sister was not complimentary about the effect of my method as it is difficult to get something nicely inside something else when they are the same size. If I do another I'll taper one bag strap very slightly at the end so it fits in without bubbling. I wanted to see if that was a good method to get an efficient entirely machine sewn process for making the bags. I also sewed my button loop onto the finished bag rather than enclosing the ends between the layers because I wasn't going to put it on at first, so when I decided to it was too late to do any differently.
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