We step away from the quilting project momentarily...

Hello, everyone.

I was going great guns on the quilt--got the coordinate tags pinned onto every square--when DD2 came to me and requested a bag to take with her back to school.

This bag should: be able to carry food. Fit under the seat in the airplane. Be easy to carry.

Then she sent me a pin from Pinterest--which pin led to long-gone reusable shopping bags--and so I chased down something like it on Sew4Home. This is a shoulder-bag tote.

Hmm. Doesn't look difficult. And--for all the marbles!--I can do something with purely the stash on hand. No shopping trip required.

The outer fabric, using a 3/4 yard cut of Texas Tech spirit fabric I had picked up on spec and some black broadcloth to make up the length at the bottom and also to make a gusset at the sides, and the lining fabric from the "grays" cubby of my quilting cabinet:

Off-cuts of the fabrics for the bag. I also used some scrap batting that was lying around.

The layers set up and cut to the desired top-edge shape. She isn't asking me to make something that folds over, so the batting will extend into the curve and I'll even add a bit of tulle for extra shaping oomph.

(I did remember to get the little Raiders right-side-up when I sewed the red panels to the black bottom fabric. Yay!)







The inner pockets being constructed from more of the black and some bits of red that was lying around. I zigzagged the seam allowances so they'd not fray all over when she uses the pockets.

It looks like there's going to be a snap added at the end, so the top will kinda-sorta close. She says that the closure is just to keep things from jumping out, not to be actually secure, so a snap is probably just about right.

And having studied the construction method in the Sew4Home project more carefully, I'm departing from it. Adding side gussets instead of making a flat bag and boxing the bottom corners means that I'm going to have to construct the lining as a bag, and the outside as a bag--I think I'll attach the batting layer to the outside layer--and then sew the completed parts together and turn through an opening. Rather like making a lined vest, really, without the problem of armholes to get into the way.
Just a strap instead...and the strap goes on at the end anyway.

I ended up with a bonus pocket, too, when I cut things out. (That's what happens when you cut the 8x8 inside-pocket piece as a 12"x8" rectangle and then cut off the end 4". And cut that 8"x4" piece in half. I did add red strips on the sides of the 4" squares, as you can see in the picture above, to get the 5" width of rectangle. I left the depth at 4" though, so the finished pocket is somewhere around 3 1/4" deep. But it's for shopping lists and suchlike anyway!

More in tomorrow's post, this has gone on plenty long already for one day.