One Yard Wonders Sew Along

The Sew Along I am participating in this year uses the One Yard Wonders book I have mentioned previously. For January the project was to make a cap. I really don;t like wearing hats so I pased on that one. The February Project was to make the Folklore Bag. It is a tote bag with a nice gusseted round shape and a top sleeve.

Here's how it looked in the book:

And here is how it came out for me:

At 13" wide, 11" tall with a 3" gusset, its more of a medium size purse rather than a tote bag to hold a day or two's worth of essentials. I used some old Christmas fabric with a great stripe for the exterior. I tried to match up the stripes on the gusset with the ones on the front and back but without much luck. The interior is a piece of pale yellow Kona Cotton that I bought recently primarily for the interiors of future tote bags and purses as a dark interior makes a bag virtually useless when looking for something in the bottom of the bag

I didn't think I would like this bag when I first read the instructions, Several things bothered me. Like...the pattern called for a magnetic catch. This can be expensive and seemed overkill for a bag thrown together from stash fabrics. I ended up using a button and a hair elastic for a closure.

In addition, the interior had a useless little pocket, was supposed to be made from the same fabric as the exterior (in this case way too dark for practical use) and the interior of the bag was to be made without the pleats of the exterior. It seemed crazy to me to make a bag with an interior tsignificantly smaller than the exterior so I used the same sized fabric pieces for both the interior and the exterior.

I did add a cell phone to the gusset of the interior. See...

Even though it is my intention that this bag will become the packaging for a Christmas gift, it will probably be used to hold my next knitting UFO until then.

This year's sew along has a cooking component to it. I am not participating in that portion. This month's recipe is for roasted spicy cauliflower with capers. Alhough I may love capers roasted cauliflower sounds just too slimy to me. Yuck!