New Bag

Lots happening in the sewing room this week - took me a while to take pictures though! I whipped this up when I got tired of pawing through my mess of a purse looking for my cell phone, keys or wallet at key moments. I showed it to my husband. "You made that?" he asked in what seemed to be disbelief. "It looks professional!" Why... thanks, honey.



The butterflies are from a vintage pillowcase. The rest is scraps from prior sewing projects, mostly linen. If I was going to do it again (and you bet I will) I will use interfacing on the fabric for the main body and lining, and I'll add a pocket in the back for my planner. But I'm thrilled. It has lots of pockets. I know where my lip gloss is. There's place for pens. My Ipod is safe. I feel so...satisfied.

Recycled shoppin' bags

I've seen a lot of good solutions online to the plastic shopping bag problem. Let me show you the two that are working for me. Above: Our big grocery chain has these great roomy $0.99 bags with straps that perfectly slip over the shoulder. They also have an atrocious logo (I mean really, super ugly). that made me not ever want to use them. I solved that, with a net gain of two pockets! I cut the leg bottoms off a pair of thrift-store pants and sewed them on over the logo. People ask me about this bag (and its sisters) constantly.


This rumply thing is rumply because it gets used. It is made from an old super stretchy tee-shirt, and modeled after a standard plastic shopping bag. I have shoved so many groceries in this bag and it's never complained. But for such a big capacity it sure stuffs down small to fit in a purse! I love that I always have it to take with me for any quick run into the store. The straps on this one fit well over the shoulders too. Surely you have a stretchy tee that could have its arms cut off to make a bag? Just take a plastic bag and use it as a guide for where to reinforce the corners and straps. Don't bother finishing the raw edges, they won't unravel, and finished edges will just make the bag less stuff-able.