The inspiration for this bag was a woven striped bag produced for a London department store. I used a supermarket tote bag to give me an idea what size to make and took the opportunity to shorten the handles as most shop bought bags seem designed for someone several inches taller than me. This was going to be a simple bag, but I ended up including three pockets and making padded, corded handles.
I bought several fat quarters with stripes of different widths to use for the main body of the bag. Most were black and white, but one was black and cream, so I tea-dyed all the fabrics to get a uniform colour.
I used patchwork to get the different widths and different directions of stripes and then lightly quilted the main pieces using off-cuts of wadding fused on to a backing of woven interfacing. The handles were also pieced and then reinforced with a woven fusible interfacing before being wrapped around a soft handle cording.
I added three pockets to the bag - a “hidden” zip pocket on the outside, a zip pocket on the inside with striped piping, and a slip pocket on the inside using remnants from making the handles.
The main problem I had making this bag (and why it took longer than it should) was my sewing was significantly impeded by the determination of Not-Our-Cat to sit on the fabric at any opportunity.
(For 2019, I am trialling a version of this website on WordPress to see if it is more mobile-friendly for commenting and posting. The WordPress version of this post is available here.)
