A Bag is Born

Sewing is not my first language. I like to create my own patterns but I don’t think in fluent “sewing”. This means I have to construct things to realize that they totally don’t work. But I have a really hard time reading other peoples patterns: because I don’t think fluent sewing. It’s a vicious circle.

But for this project all I wanted to do was rework the pattern I created for a felted bag. I just wanted to simplify the bottom construction. That should be super simple, right? Well not if you don’t think “sewing”. So I got this little mess at first.

It turned out about 4 inches to short. Oops! The seams were crazy bulky and my elna didn’t want to sew through them. And my elna will sew through almost anything. I love that machine.

Once I got that mistake out of my system, the new pattern came together great.


And I want to share a fun pattern trick I use. I love good quality wrapping paper, but it’s expensive and I’m cheap. So to justify buying good wrapping papers I use the left over wrapping paper to make my patterns with. Win, win.

So here’s the new bag in all her glory. I’m really happy with how it turned out. And the construction is easier than the original pattern.

The burlap is all lined with the pink so you can see pink through out the bag. I like to have pockets on my bags; I’m a function first kind of girl. So each end has an outer pocket, for my keys and cell phone. And the inside liner has many little pockets for pens, ipod, notebooks, and much more.



I want to thank Maya over at Maya Made; her burlap buckets were a big influence on this fabric combination. I loved the look of her burlap and knew I wanted to add some to my summer bag. Thank you Maya.