Well, that was a quick sewing goal accomplished! The bag went very quickly with only 1 place where I had to stop and scratch my head. (Not doing the patchwork = EASY bag!) I think it took maybe 4 hours to sew all together, including cutting out.

I was going to wait until I could take prettier pictures of it, but oh well. iPhone photos below! Once again, the pattern can be purchased here.

I used the material I had left over from Jocelyn’s sundress. I did buy a new walking foot for my machine, and I must say, I wish I had bought one of these things YEARS ago. Sewing machines have this jagged little thingee that comes up from the bottom and “feeds” the material through — called the feed dog. If you have several layers however, the feed dog only pushes the bottom through and the top layer can go through at a slower speed than the bottom layer causing some wonkiness. A walking foot feeds the top side of the material through so there’s no wonkiness. This will be VERY handy on the satin binding of the baby blankets I make from time to time!

The only real question I had was the bias tape binding for the top edging and handle. The pattern calls for 1″ double folded bias tape. First of all, the tape I was looking at didn’t come in 1″ wide, only 7/8″ wide. And second of all, it looked much too wide. But, I bought some anyway and took it home. When it came to the binding/handles/tape part though, I still wasn’t quite sure. I had some 1/2″ tape on hand so I used that, which looked VERY nice. When I was pinning it on for the handles, it struck me that it would make very flimsy handles/straps. So I ended up taking the 7/8″ bias tape and folding it over – this made for a VERY thick binding/straps (my machine complained a little) but the end result is very satisfactory – nice thick handles to hang on to.

I love this bag SO much. I think it would be especially cute to do a little hand quilting on it – outline a flower or two, maybe sew on a few beads. That’s the kind of time-consuming hand work that I am not good at finishing though, so I doubt it will happen.

I definitely think I’ll be making another one of these. Or two. Or three!

-amy