May 16, 2011

Ali's Bag

I'll start this project off with a little bit of a background story. My mother has a backpack style purse and every time she visits with my cousins, my little cousin Ali asks to wear it and then asks if she can keep it! When my Mom told me about this I knew I had to do something about it. If a girl has her eye set on her perfect purse then she needs it, no matter how old she is! I got to work on Ali's backpack purse and made sure to make it a little more age appropriate...

When I start a new sewing project that I've never done before the first thing I do is draw a sketch of how I think things should lay out. Then I sketch the shapes of the pieces that I think I will need. I basically just make my own pattern. So here are all the pieces I needed to make this bag. The 2 pieces on the left will make the body of the bag, the piece under that will be the handle, the 2 pieces on the right are the straps and the piece under those is the bottom of the bag. 


 First step was to make the body of the bag.


I sewed this fold so that I could put elastic through it to make the opening of the bag stretchy.



I sewed the body of the bag wrong sides together (like you do a pillowcase).


In between these steps i made the straps just by sewing the rectangle pieces into a tube shape (right sides together) then flipping them inside right. Just like with the yoga bag that I made, I put the straps into place when sewing the bottom of the bag on.


Next I fed the elastic through the opening I made in the bag. I ended up not using the drawstring stop piece pictured here and just sewed the ends of the elastic together and sewing the opening shut.


Finally I added the clasp that will be used to open and close the bag. These pieces came from a bag that I already owned but no longer used. I'm sure they can be bought from Joann Fabrics or somewhere like that too.


Ali loved her new bag! She was so excited to find things to put inside of it!


Colleen gave the bag a try too!


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