My mom asked me to work on constructing her a new bag to carry her water bottles in when she goes to work. She said she uses it daily and wanted a replacement for when the one she has wears out. So I went to Joann's and Hobby Lobby and got some cute fabric to make two new ones.
The original bag is about 14" x 10". I decided to increase the size to 17" x 13" with a 1/2" seam allowance. The original bag doesn't have any batting, but I decided to add some to keep her drinks cool. I also decided to omit the crisscross stitching pattern. The bars on the front of the bag however will have the lines sewn on.
I chose a cute patterned fabric from the 50% off section at Joann's for the first bag. I thought the nice teal color would look nice with light grey accent so I grabbed some of the grey Symphony broadcloth for the lining and accent lines.
I began drafting the pattern. I drew out the piece and added the current measurements to my sketch. Then I redrew the piece and used the measurements I wanted. Some parts of the bag I decided to keep the same or add just a few quarters of an inch to. The strap on the back just needed more length because I felt the current size would still work for the slightly larger bag. This is where my brain decided to shut down. Math and I are not the best of friends. The math is simple yes, but adding in for seam allowance and calculating how everything fit was giving me a headache. One day I will breakdown and buy a pattern making book, but not today.
Since this bag is mostly made up of linear pieces I decided to draw all the lines on the fabric instead of making a pattern to trace. Once I had all the pieces cut out I did a rough placement of how I wanted the bag to look. I decided to forgo cutting out the lining pieces and batting until I had a final measurement on how the top would come out.
It looked pretty nice so far. I ended up making the top grey bars shorter by accident but it was easily fixed. The next step was to pin everything together and sew it. I wanted to make sure to do the sides first because any discrepancy in width could be made up by shrinking the middle piece or using a shorter seam allowance.
Once I had it all together it was time to iron the seams flat and then attach it to the batting. I decided on stitching only in the "ditches". I felt like it would be too much to stitch along side all the seams like I originally planned. This was the first time I have ever needed to do this method. It is really easy.
The white arrow is pointing to a groove in your presser foot. If you line up the "ditch" with that groove your needle will follow it and you wont see the stitches. Using a long stitch helps and I found that it reduces puckering along the seam lines.
Then I started working on the back. I made the strap by using 3" x 26" piece of fabric and folding it over wrong side out. I then use a half inch seam and stitched the two ends together and then flipped it right side out. I pressed it with the seam on the side and then ran it through the machine again on both edges 1/2" to tack it down. I then put the back pieces together with the strap down the middle. I really don't like this design so In the future if I make this again I will make it backpack style and put two straps or one more off center so that I can throw it over my back properly. But my mom likes this style and I did what she wished. After sewing it all together, I pressed open all my seams and directed the tail of the straps in toward the middle. I again attached the back to the batting as before but instead of stitching under/outside the strap, I sewed over the strap to secure it more in place and have less risk of it ripping out.
The white arrow is showing that the raw tail should be ironed that way so the stitching goes over the strap.
When it is done the back of the batting should look like this for the front piece. I already had trimmed off the excess batting and remeasured to cut my piece of lining. I then sewed the lining to the top of the back with right sides together. I opened it up so could iron the seam flat to make folding easier. I did the same for both front and back pieces. Then I folded it over and ironed along the edge so the top would be straight and the lining covered the batting.
I then took both pieces and put them together with the right sides together and pinned. At this point because of the batting and the layers of fabric my bag was very very thick. I felt that it would be a good time to use my walking foot since I wanted all the layers to stay in place. I hooked it all together and tested a few pieces to make sure it was working properly before I fed my bag through.
Using a 1/2" seam I went all the way around the edges of the bag leaving the top open. I trimmed the edges down and flipped the bag right side out and popped out the corners. It looked excellent! The only thing left to do was to add the grommets and make the draw string. I will save that for the next post and add a tutorial on how I do grommets. For now here is what the bag looks like before grommets and the draw string.
Happy Sewing!
Update 8/4/14 - The finished bag can be seen here!
