Shopping tote in 30 minutes

A month or so ago I was contacted by Becki at Interior Goods Direct who asked me if I'd like to sew some items using some fabric that they would send me.  Of course, the answer was yes!

This lovely bundle was what she sent me. 

They're all long quarter or half yard cuts and they are in a range of substrates.  I've got cotton, canvas, linen, velvet, satin and a few others I can't really identify!  I plan to bring you a series of posts about what I make with some of these fabrics.

I love those clocks on the left and the two fabrics top and bottom right.  There are also some great basic patterns in there in fabrics that will challenge my sewing skills!  That London themed canvas shouted "shopping bag!" at me, so a shopping bag it was!

I was left with just a small remnant, though I did use a striped ticking fabric from the bundle on the handles.  I had to piece them whatever I did due to the cut of the fabric, so I thought I'd throw in something different.  

This is the most basic of basic tote bags, made without a pattern, and making up the measurements as I went along.  It's 15" x 14" with a 4" gusset, gussets are a must for a shopping bag.  I made that by simply boxing the corners.  The handles are really long as I like to be able to put shopping bags over my shoulder as I have tiny hands!

Spot the deliberate mistake?  Yep, should have cut in half and sewn a bottom seam rather than using one long panel of fabric as the main piece!  Yes, it saved time but the whole thing took about 30 minutes so I didn't really need to save the time!

Perhaps not my neatest sewing ever!  Sewing on handles neatly is soooo hard.  I decided not to line it, instead I zigzaged all my seams in the seam allowance to give it a bit more strength.  

If you want to see what else Interior Goods Direct have to offer, and I know some of you make cloths and home furnishings, you can find them in the following places:

Face book: https://www.facebook.com/InteriorGoodsDirect/?fref=ts

Instagram: @InteriorGoodsDirect

Web: www.interiorgoodsdirect.com

Clearly this is a sponsored post as I was provided the fabrics free of charge, however all opinions are 100% my own.

Saving the planet

Morning ladies, I hope you all had a nice break.  I went to see my lovely little nephew.  He's gorgeous.  Before I went, I got started on a new project.  Now, I hate plastic bags.  I don't know what the situation is in other countries, but over here in the UK the supermarkets give out flimsy plastic bags for your shopping for free.  You can buy a sturdier one for about 10p.  I've got a load of those "sturdier" ones as I can't bear the throw away ones, it's such a waste.  The problem is, even the sturdier ones rip and I've been meaning to replace them with fabric ones for a while.  This weekend, I did. 

I won a Sew, Mama, Sew giveaway Day prize last year from The Green Bag Lady who sent me a fabric shopping bag and the fabric to make another one to pass on to a friend, which I did.  I used her tutorial for all the bags below, I didn't really need a tutorial but it was handy to have the measurements to hand.  First, I made three bags using an old sheet I'd bought from a charity shop.  The scalloped edge meant I didn't have to hem the top.

See?

3 bags isn't enough.  For our large shop, I generally use about 10 as I can't carry them if they're too heavy.  My mum had given me an old double duvet cover and I set to work cutting it up.  Ever wondered what 15 cut out shopping bags looks like?  This:

I got 14 bags from the duvet cover (handles from the pillow case), and also I made one more from the sheet.  I chain sewed.  I sewed fast and sloppily and it really doesn't matter as it's a shopping bag.  Or rather it's 18 shopping bags.  (I'm not allowed to left-align this paragraph, don't know why - sorry, I know centred paragraphs are hard to read).

The duvet cover was spotty on one side and stripy on the other so some bags are spotty...

Some are stripy:

And some were cut from the edge so are both:

I'm going to have the funkiest shopping in Nottingham!  These are just supermarket shopping bags, I have a fancy pants shopping bag that I keep in my handbag for craft shopping, or clothes shopping trips.  These are purely for the supermarket.

If you currently use plastic bags, I beg you to make some of these.  All 18 took me a total of about 5 hours I think, so they're quick and you probably don't need 18!  We went shopping yesterday (nope, not with the bags, they weren't finished) and I was shocked, as I always am, by the amount of people who still use the flimsy, disposable bags.  I'm no eco-warrier, but it's about time the government banned them.  Make people pay for their plastic bags and it might encourage them to take them with them when they shop.

Eco-rant over, normal service will now be resumed.

The ugly bag. Really ugly.

Good afternoon ladies.  I've just finished my lunch of carrot sticks, houmous, ryvita and cottage cheese and now I'm stuffed and want to go to sleep.  All I want to do recently is sleep.  I blame the yeast. 

I finally have a finished project!  I started this ages ago and showed you it as a WIP, but I didn't like the pattern I was following and it didn't make sense in places, so I ripped it all out and started again with a different pattern.  This one here.  Wow, that was a pain to find.  I really hate what they've done to Delicious.  They've changed it from a great place to store bookmarks which are searchable by loads of different tabs, to a place of frustration where they seem to have hidden most of your links and instead are offering you strangers' links to peruse?!?  I'm slowly moving the links over to Pinterest, but I've got several thousand.  Also, I'm not sure if you can search by tag on Pinterest as I don't like to give links just one category.

Anyway, shut up Wendy.  Show them the shopping bag. 

That's crap picture number one.  I had a right job trying to get this to look right whilst photographing it.  I used the 2 balls of crochet cotton I'd picked up at a charity shop, they ran out just before the top, hence the garish silver band and handles from a sparkly yarn given to me by my mum which was of approximately the same weight. 

And there's crap picture number two.  You now all know I live in a "stop thief - our property is watermarked" area.  I hate the colours of this bag, it's gross, BUT, it's for putting cabbages and bananas in, not for hanging on the wall and admiring so it doesn't actually matter.  And it cost me 50p to make.  It looks pretty small, I'm hoping it will stretch as I won't get many brussel sprouts in it if it doesn't.  I did mean to take it shopping on Monday to try it out but I forgot it.  I blame that on the yeast too.

P.S.  I went back into my dashboard after posting this and I've lost a follower.  What did I say?  Was it the yeast thing?  She must have been a massive yeast-fan.  Sorry to other yeast-lovers out there, nothing personal.

14 steps to buggering up a shopping bag

I'm linking up to Allie's Christmas Countdown today, a sort of warning to other Christmas sewists!



A friend's birthday is coming up and I thought I'd "whip up" a fold away shopping bag for her using Crafty Ady's tutorial, like I made in this post, but without the mistakes.  And as I'd made it before and it'd be so quick and easy I'd make 4 and use 3 as Christmas presents.  What's that they say about the best laid plans?  So ladies, today is my tutorial on how to comprehensively bugger up a shopping bag.

1.  Make sure your cutting out is shoddy.  You don't really want the sides to match when you're sewing the seams.  If the handles can be off centre too, that would be a bonus.

2. When sewing on your binding, first of all, press the seams to the wrong side, this will ensure you have difficulty folding the binding over the seam.  Make sure you press with steam, we don't want any semi-permanent pressing here making things easy.

3. Sew on the binding as haphazardly as possible.  Make sure you miss the binding in places and the seam you're covering in others.

4.  The sewn line should be as wobbly as possible, as should the edge of the binding.

5.  Where the join in your binding is, fold and sew as messily as you can.

6.  Cut a bit of the underneath binding fabric off, make sure it's to the side of the overlap so it's visible.

So that's the binding on.  Next move on to the poppers.

7. Don't have the correct equipment, you're best off with a crappy plastic guide and a hammer.  Make sure the two elements aren't lined up properly so that the prongs miss the backing and stick out through the front.  I missed a trick here as I didn't remember to whack myself with the hammer.



8. Do this on several of the poppers, not just one.

9. You should try to cut yourself when removing the misapplied poppers, preferably on both hands.  I didn't do as well as I could here as although I cut both hands, I only bled on one shopping bag.

10. Oh, I forgot to say, mark the position of the poppers with pencil or marker pen so it will be visible after you've applied the popper.  If you can get an accidental pencil mark above the popper, so much the better.

11. Poppers applied?  Is one upside down?  Good.   Are three of them upside down?  Excellent.  It is OK to sob a little bit at this point, but only if you've already had to undo 3 misaligned poppers. 

12. After trying unsuccessfully to remove the poppers, unpick the flap and sew back on the correct way.  Make sure you catch some of the upper part of the bag in the seam.

13.  Repeat step 12.  Sob a little more.

14.  Sew the rest of the flaps on the correct way round.  This is the point you should notice another popper that was misaligned.  Undo it, making sure to cut yourself again.

Done?   Extra points for burning a hole in the shopping bag with the iron.  I avoided this by not ironing the bag when I'd finished as a hole was the only outcome I was likely to see.

Happy with them?  Erm... no.  Throw into the Christmas present box and don't think about them again. 

Total time taken: 8 hours. 
Poppers ruined: 4
Tears shed: copious

**Disclaimer - all errors were mine, Ady's tutorial is brilliant and does not include the steps above.

Weeks of frustration for one tiny gift...

Morning ladies.  I'm up bright and early this Sunday morning.  Well, it's 11:20 so fairly early for a bank holiday weekend and the start of two weeks off work!  I also got confirmation of my trip, I'll only be going to China, not Japan, but it's still good news.  I leave in 3 weeks time and I'll be there for 3 weeks.  I'll be taking my work laptop with me so hopefully I'll still be around, though I don't know if I'll have anything to post about. 

Oh, I mentioned last week I was going to see The Inbetweeners Movie - if any of you were thinking of seeing it, go!  It's so funny.

So, what's this frustration I'm talking about?  Well, one of my friends had a little baby boy back in March, I see him every Thursday in the cafe near work as she's a work colleague on maternity leave and comes back to meet me and another friend.  He's teething at the minute and a bit cranky so needs his dummy but often spits it out (dummy is the UK word for pacifier and a much better one I think - I can't imagine a toddler saying the word "pacifier"!).  If it goes on the floor, it's game over.  I thought that one of these dummy clips I've seen around would be the ideal thing for him.  He's too young to stuff it back in his mouth himself, but it'll stop it going on the floor. 

I went to Hobbycraft for some crocodile clips but they don't sell them.  I search the web, I found them in only one place on ebay and bought some.  3 bloody weeks they took to turn up.

I made one of the blue ones with animals on it first and realised they were so quick and easy I'd whip up a few.  One of the peachy coloured ones went wrong, the interfacing got snagged when I turned it and when I tried to pull it into place it tore.

I didn't use a tutorial for this, I made it up myself but didn't take photographs as there are about a billion tutorials out there already.  I used little loops of ribbon or cord for the dummy end - these will be looped through the dummy handle, then themselves to secure it.

A tab of co-ordinating ribbon on the other end holds the clip in place.  I thought I'd give baby Max a couple and put the rest in my shop.  Unless anyone wants one?

Speaking of sending things to bloggy friends (a tenuous link I know!), I got two wonderful parcels this week.  First up a swap with Jacey (Jacey, I can't find the link to your blog!) in Texas.  We met in the comments section of someone else's blog and I sent her some English chocolate in exchange for some American sweets.  She sent me a family bag of Twizzlers - my favourites, and some cola bottles.  Both packs are decimated so I can't show you a picture!

The second parcel was from the lovely Susan who blogs at Canadian Abroad.  If you haven't met Susan, go over and see her.  She blogs every day and is a prolific sewist.  She'd asked if anyone wanted some fabrics she'd bought early on in her sewing journey and considered to be ugly!  I thought they were beautiful and snapped them right up!  What do you think:

Thanks so much Susan!  Now I just have to work out what to send you in return...   It might be after my trip to China so please don't think I've forgotten you.  Nor you Allie, just got the buttons to sew on and your seat belt cosies will be with you.  I apologise for the delay, I blame the stealing of my mojo which recently occured. 

Speaking of my mojo (wow, I could write Dave's Tedious Links - a small Radio One reference for you Brits there), I think it's back.  I've been cross stitching up a storm, working on my giant granny and this afternoon, after I've spent some quality time with the rabbit's poo, I'll be sewing up these:

More fold away shopping bags, cut from a "vintage" sheet I found in a charity shop. I'm loathe to say it's vintage as I have no idea how old it is!  It's just someone's cast off, but at £2.50 for a flat double sheet and 2 matching pillow cases I couldn't pass it up!  One of these will be a birthday present and the other 3 will be Christmas presents - Allie, I will be joining in this month!

Is it wrong to make someone a birthday present/Christmas present from a thrifted sheet?  Especially as the finished bag will have only cost me pence to make?

shopping bag

Once again, I have forgotten to upload my photos onto the computer, so today I only have one thing to show you.  I made a fold up shopping bag for my mother-in-law's birthday last Saturday.

I used a tutorial I'd spotten a while ago and bookmarked by Crafty Ady, this link takes you to her blog, the link to the pdf tutorial is in her left hand side bar.

The bag has a really clever construction which means you can roll it up and keep it in your handbag for when you "accidentally" buy loads of fabric/threads/books/chocolate.

I think the fabric is Riley Blake Merry something, I bought it ages ago for a bag lining, but as I'd bought it off line, in the flesh it didn't really go with the other fabric I'd chosen. 

I made a couple of mistakes with this.  First I put the popper on the wrong side of the bag.  Ooops.  I couldn't get it off as it'd been hammered in place so I left it there and told her it was decoration!  I'm also pretty sure I sewed the main bag up wrong, as you can see, the seam goes down the front and back which means that the gussetted bottom is also the wrong way round, but I think that works better as a bag anyway.  My excuse, I'm sticking to it.

I used these poppers.  I bought them, then became convinced I needed a special set of pliers which were about £30, luckily I didn't need them, just a hammer.

And look, binding!  Oh yes, I did it again!  This time, it's fully machined in place as this is, after all, a shopping bag, not a work of art.  It was really, really easy.  I didn't pin it in place this time and that seemed to work better for me around the curves, I just kind of fed it in.  I did miss the back of the binding in places when I stitched the second side but I don't think it matters in a shopping bag - a quilt maybe.

And here it is all rolled up.  Aahh, cute.  Thanks Ady, I'll be making half a ton of these for presents!