Vintage Floral Tote Bag
I got this beautiful vintage floral fabric from JoAnnes a while back and finally got a few things sewn up with it. One was this reversible tote bag. It’s a big bag–like beach bag size.
It's gorgeous fabric--and it's a really big bag.
It turned out much bigger than I expected (which is funny since I’m the one that cut it out). It would fit a lot of groceries or towels. It would probably work great for a gym bag or a knitting project bag too. Roomy and easy to access.
Is there anything that polka dots are not perfect for?
I love fabrics that have a lot of colors in them. It gives you so many choices for accents. You could use pink, orange, green, blue, or my warm brown polka dots with these flowers.
I love using brown and cream as neutrals instead of black or white.
This was a gift project so I also made a card to go with it. I’m in love with the new Stampin’ Up! Wisteria Wonder purple and their ruffled ribbon. It feels very vintage to me.
The bird tag and the patterned paper is from 7 Gypsies.
I find envelops a little tricky if you make your own cards. If you have too much 3D or if you have anything hanging over the edges then it’s hard to fit the card into the envelop. I’m not a big fan of making my own envelopes. I’ll do it occasionally for a specific project, but just making a lot of them is very tedious to me. So I just tend to measure and cut my cards about a half inch smaller than my envelope to give myself plenty of room to work with.
The vintage-style brad is from Stampin Up! too.
You have to be careful if you’re mailing your stuff too. Sometimes if you have brads, buttons, or other 3D elements, the Post Office machines will rip the envelope. There’s a good reason to make your own for ya–quality scrapbooking paper is thicker than your standard card envelope. Always be sure to put your complete return address on handmade cards–that way hopefully they at least come back to you if something happens to them!
This was a hand delivered gift though, so we just skipped the envelope and put it in the pocket of the tote bag.
What new craft supplies have you been working with lately?
You did a great job!
Love that fabric – so pretty 🙂
I’ve been working on hair clips for my Etsy shop, and have started on crayon rolls – they have been SO much fun to work on. My machine is giving me fits at the moment though, so I took a break last night!
I love this idea as a gift for Christmas… grocery bags…encourage my family to go Green! Thanks! Oh yeah, I need to find this pattern…?
Here’s a link to the same site I got my original tutorial from, but with several other grocery bag ideas!
This one I just eyeballed and fabricated until I had what I wanted!
How ADORABLE!!! Would LOVE it if you would link this project up to my turquoise linky party going on right now!! http://www.sweetlittlegals.com/2011/09/turquoise-lovin-3.html
what pattern did you use to make this bag? love it
I didn’t exactly use a pattern. I used this tutorial … Reversible Tote Bag…from Skip to my Lou as a start, but I modified the size by eyeballing to what I thought I wanted (it ended up being about 16″ across by 13″ tall by 4″ wide–also known as HUGE!) and I slapped two different materials together to make a double sided strap and made the straps 2.5 inches wide since the bag was so big! The pockets I just eyeballed for size too, and top stitched them on the pieces before assembly. I’m very happy with how it turned out though!