My Weekender Bag

I made another Weekender Bag! This one is number three, after the first and the second. I'm sure this will be the last one for a while. It is a lot of work! This one's for me because I want one for myself, too. And I'll get to use it when I go back to Akron next week!

I had wanted to put some pockets on the inside, but at this point I just want to be done with it. All I have left to do is to sew in the lining, which by the way is some hot pink denim that was 50% off at Joann's. The main fabric is fromAnna Maria Horner's Drawing Room collection. I love it! It's one of my favorites. I couldn't afford to make the whole bag with Drawing Room fabric. According to the pattern, it requires four yards of fabric! Twelve feet of fabric to make one bag, plus five yards of interfacing and stabilizer. I actually had quite a bit of fabric left over because I'm extra thrifty when I cut out the pieces. I'd been looking for a cheaper home decor weight fabric at Joann's, but they didn't have anything that looked good with my fabric. Luckily I found this pink denim that was even cheaper and looks pretty good I think. Nice, eh?





This is what it looks like on the inside. Sewing through all the layers of fabric is the most difficult. I only broke two needles this time, not bad.

Luggage Tag and Zippered Pouch

Every fellow traveler needs a fun luggage tag! I made this little set for Aileen's birthday, a zippered pouch and luggage tag out of Amy Butler fabric. I don't like calling them pouches, but I'm not sure what else to call them. I love this fabric, and it photographs so well.

I almost got the pattern to line up at the seams! And here's a shot of the back of the luggage tag.

Amy Butler Sophia Bag

Another Amy Butler bag to report. I'm nearly done. I just have to hand sew the interior lining. Hand sewing is a pain, but it's something I can do while watching tv. The inside of the bag is red (thrift store bed sheet) with four pockets. I had to use a navy zipper, because that's pretty much all they had at the store. The longer the zipper, the less colours seem to be available.

Here's a look at it outside with the lovely power lines. The dots turned out a bit crooked, which makes the bag look like it's leaning, but I still like it. I made the underside of the handles red, which I think was a good decision. I love this bag. I love the shape of it. It's quite large, too.



This was pretty similar to the Weekender Bag to make. It took me a little less time to make because it's smaller. But it's still very time-consuming. No wonder handmade handbags are so expensive, because they take so flippin' long to make. I don't know how many hours I put in to this, but I'm definitely learning.

Weekender Bag #2

Happy Birthday Carrie! I made another Amy Butler bag for my friend Carrie in Arizona for her birthday. It's the same pattern as the bag I made for Becky, but with different fabric, also from IKEA. This was the fabric I bought last month after dropping my mom off at the airport early in the morning and the waiting four hours for IKEA to open. See My Silly Sunday post. The interior fabric is standard home decor fabric from the fabric store.


The bag has a removable false bottom piece that sits inside the bag to give it more support. The pattern instructions say to use quilter's template plastic, but I found these halloween placemates in clearance for $.60. They were the perfect length and thickness. And they cost a quarter of the price for the template plastic. For the previous bag, I had used one of those flexible chopping boards. I'm a bargain shopper.

Weekender Bag

First off, let me just say...YAY FOR BARACK OBAMA!!!! I had class until 9pm, so I had to settle for web updates. I heard the end of Barack Obama's speech on the way home. What an exciting time for this country! It will be nice to have a president I can respect and admire again. Yay!!! Okay, back to the blog. Becky just got her birthday gift from me, so now I can post it. It's Amy Butler's Weekender Bag! I'd been pining for the pattern for several months before I broke down and purchased it from etsy. This bag was a challenge because so much of sewing is new to me. But I enjoyed making it, and I'll be making more. I really want one for myself!

The toughest part was the cording. I broke about eight needles trying to sew through all the layers. No joke. The other challenge was deciding on fabric. I couldn't afford the fabric I really wanted. Amy Butler fabric runs about $15 a yard, which is fine for a wallet. But this bag uses rougly 3-4 yards of fabric. Plus two yards of interfacing. so I went with IKEA fabric, which turned out well, I think. It's a very large bag and holds a lot of stuff.

This is from the Amy Butler site. check it out, there's lots of good stuff. And she's in ohio!