A crafty interlude: warning, lots of photos!

Date: 23 July 2007 22:25:33

Someone wanted to know how to make a bag for a little girl's birthday present. Well, you're in luck as I made one this weekend for a friend of Groover's, and remembered to take photos as I went along. I seem to have a very large number of photos, but here goes anyway. I hope this makes sense.

1. Cut out your fabric.
I'm not giving measurements as I usually make it roughly the size of whatever I'm going to put in it (with a half inch seam allowance)! So you need to cut:

2 x outer fabric
2 x lining fabric
2 x interface, if you're using it - I would recommend you do unless your outer fabric is very heavy
(the above all identical in size)
and a strip of lining fabric to decorate the outside, if that's what you're using.
Don't cut any fabric for the handles yet.

2. Add any decoration.
This might be sewing on buttons or beads, embroidery or whatever you like. For this bag I took a strip of the fabric I was using for a lining, and added that to one side. I find this the easiest way to decorate, especially if you're in a hurry. So, I turned & pressed 1/4 of an inch under on each of the long sides, and stitched it to one of the pieces of 'outer' fabric:

3. Make the outer bag.
Now you need to make a sandwich of your 'outer' fabric and the interfacing. Put the outer fabric right sides together, and the interface either side of that, if that makes sense. So the sandwich goes (from top to bottom) interface - outer fabric right side down - outer fabric right side up - interface:

Stitch these layers along both long sides, and one short side. The short side should be the bottom, obviously (if you've put decoration on it so that there is a right way up!).
To make the bag easier to turn you might also want to snip the corners. Then turn this outer bag the right way around, and give it a bit of an iron.

4. Make the lining.
Take the lining fabric, place the two pieces right sides together, and stitch down the long sides only

5. Make your handles.
Now it's time to decide how long you need your handles to be. I do this by the highly scientific method of fiddling about with a tape measure until I think it looks right:

So, in this example I decided I wanted handles 11 inches long and 1 inch wide. I cut two pieces from the outer fabric, 11 inches by 2 and a half inches. Because the outer fabric for this bag is quite thin, I also cut two pieces of interface, 11 inches by just under 1 inch. If your outer fabric is heavier, you could skip that.
Fold the fabric strips in half, and stitch along the long side using a quarter of an inch seam allowance (you want it fairly small in this bit so it doesn't end up too bulky). So now you should have two tubes, which you need to turn the right way out, the iron flat. The turning them the right way out generally involved a crochet hook, a chopstick and lots of muttering.

If you're adding interfacing, I stick a safety pin in one end then thread it through the finished tube. That's why it wants to be just under an inch wide; if it's too snug it will be a nightmare to thread through.

6. Attach your handles and assemble the bag.
So, now you should have an outer bag, a lining, and two handles:

You need to place the outer bag (which should be the right way out) inside the lining (which should be inside-out). Then, take your handles and sandwich them between the lining and the outer. The main part of the handle needs to be right in between, with the raw edges at the ends next to the raw edges of the bag. I really hope that makes sense as the photo I took to illustrate this step didn't come out very well.

Now you need to sew all around the top of the bag, sewing the lining, handles, and outer together:

7. Turn the bag & sew up the lining.
Now, because the bottom seam of the lining hasn't been stitched, you will be able to turn the whole thing the right way around through that opening:

Turn the raw edge at the bottom of the lining in on itself so no raw edges are showing, and topstitch to close the gap.

8. Finishing off.
Firstly give the bag a good ironing. It might be fine as it is but you might also want to topstich around the top of the bag as this sometimes helps it all lie a bit flatter than ironing alone. Anyway, at the end of it all you should have something that looks a bit like this (you can see that I did topstitch this one):

Lastly, fill with goodies and hand over. They've always gone down very well so far!