diy

Tote Bags

For Christmas this year, we made last minute (and we do mean very last minute) tote bags to house our travel themed gifts. Instructions were provided by Mariko at supereggplant and the totes looked so simple and fun and cute that we stopped by the fabric store to pick up materials at 3 pm on Christmas Eve. Here's what the finished results look like:

Since instructions are readily available online for how to make the totes, we have just a few words on the trickier aspects of crafting them. One of the steps that had us stumped for a few minutes involved making the bottom of the tote, sewing corners that would allow the tote to have a flat bottom when placed on a firm surface.

If you've ever made a paper crane, or are familiar with origami, then you'll realize that the process is pretty much the same. After finishing the edges of your tote, you'll want take the tote and position it so that the side seams are in the center (placing a hand on either side of the seam seems to work as it gets the corners tented out into the shape you'll want them to be eventually). You'll want to fold your bag like so:

*Turning the bag inside out and then sewing would be advisible too!

Then, flatten the bag down so it looks like this:

After that, you can determine how deep of a bottom you want your bag to have, measure and sew across the corner.

Another thing that took some experimentation for us to get right: straps. We made ours out of the same material as the tote, but inevitably they'd get crooked and twisted when we finished sewing them on. To solve this problem (and really, to make it easy on ourselves so there was no confusion) simply use the same process as above.

Take the bag and center the side seams, placing your hands on either side of the seam to prop the tote open. Then, prepare the straps so they're facing each other and place them on the tote so it looks like you're creating a pair of suspendered pants.

The dotted red line in the photo denotes the centered side seam.

Obviously, you want to avoid twisted straps like these:

Pin the straps down between the tote and lining, then sew them in place.

And there you go, cute, easy handmade tote bags. If you can master the basics, you can move on to extras like adding a pocket. Or, you can tackle more ambitious projects like this.

Posted by lintwins at December 26, 2004 03:30 PM