Sunday, June 14, 2009

The Hold Everything Tote Bag - Revised

The June installment of the Stitchin Heaven Persanality monthly tote program made if off my to-do list today. The April bag is in pieces due to a significant cutting error and I skipped the May installment but June shows that the store is really learning about making me happy... not everyone but definitely me.

First of all they made up the bag in the fabrics that they sent in the package. This is so useful when you are trying to interpret the pattern with someone else's ideas of what should go where. In addition, it allowed the staff to see if the instructions for cutting and assembling the bag were correct as published ... a big bonus to know that in the middle of the night you are not nuts about a ceratin cut of fabric not fitting the bag.
The fabrics were cute western themed ones that I like. The kit they put together had the lightest fabric as the interior so its easier to find stuff in the bottom of the bag. Nice to see such good choices being made.

Instead of sending a pattern and a quilting magazine, they sent a special publication from Better Homes and Gardens entitled Bags, Pillows and Pincushions. This was a great choice as I felt I got a big bang for my buck this month as there were a lot of great ideas for future projects.

The bag went together smoothly and I only made a couple of changes.

First of all, the instructions asked for one layer of heavy weight fusible interfactig to be applied tot he exterior fabirc and straps. I didn't have any on hand so I used a layer of light weight on both the exterior and interior fabrics.

I skipped the interior pocket as I am beginning to find I don't use them in tote bags. I added a hanging cell phone pocket like here. I had a lot of scraps left over so I added some other bits and ended up with a long bag that I modeled after this one I made last year. I am hoping to use it as a place to gather all the little bits I carry around so that they will not get lost in the bottom of the tote.


The suggested stiffener for the bottom of the bag was Timtex/Peltex interfacing. I used a piece of old/stained rotary cutting mat board that I have been slowly using up in projects like this.

Now that I look at this bag again, I see that it would also make a great case for long knitting needles. I wonder if there is anyone Iknow who could use a fancy, schmancy knitting bag?

Well that will have to wait until I get some pictures taken for this post. Alex and the girls have just returned from a sleepover at Paul's and wouldn't you know it, I can't find my camera again.

ALEX!.... can't blame him anymore so here is a photo of the finshed bag... which is about 10" x 4" x 15" tall with 22" long handles, some extra trim I had lying around, a hanging cell phone pocket and a huge 18" long knitting needle bag.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I Love it! :)

<3