'Phoebe' Handbags

Once again this christmas I have tried to make more presents than we have had to go out and buy. I prefer to give people something handmade as it just makes it a little more special and personal to that person.

Seeing as I seem to have become good friends with my sewing machine this year I decided to venture into making the women in the family handbags for christmas. My mum knew I was going to be making handbags so she had the luxury of picking the fabric she wanted at a craft show...but she didn't know what design of bag she would be getting as I hadn't even decided when she chose her fabric.

In the end I decided to use Rebeka's design for the Phoebe Bag from her blog ArtsyCraftyBabe.

Here's the finished 3 handbags to be given as presents.

For my boyfriend's Stepmum I chose a dark blue floral print, a little like a Cath Kidston print

For his Mum I chose a pale yellow floral print, once again very similar to a Cath Kidston style of fabric...after all who doesn't like a CK print?

After much deliberation and changing her mind from dotty to hearts to butterflies and back round again, mum finally settled on this butterfly print fabric. The only thing any of the fabrics she chose had in common was that they were all purple as she has a bit of a thing for purple still.

As a reward for making everybody else's bags I decided to make myself one with a white and blue floral print fabric. by the time I got round to making my bag I totally had the knack of it and mine only took an hour and half from cutting all the fabric to putting in the last stitches, very impressed!

Each of the bags has a simple plain ivory cotton lining and a large pocket made using the outer fabric, as shown in the photo below. I also stitched in one of my handmade labels as well so everybody knows I made the bags instead of having bought them somewhere. The bags are held shut by a magnetic clasp on the flap that comes over the opening of the bag.

Here's hoping they all liked their handbags and they get some good use out of them. I have masses of each fabric left so there may be some matching items made for future presents too!

I really recommend this handbag design to anyone who wants to start making their own bags, the pdf pattern is great and so are the instructions. A little googling on how to do the darts for the first bag and I was well and truly on my way getting them whipped up in a flash.

Knitting Bag

 At a fabric show earlier in the year my nan found out I was making handbags for the women in the family for christmas so she asked me to make her a knitting bag for christmas...this was my plan all along but at least with her asking I could get her to pick a fabric that she liked.

 So she picked a dark blue dragonfly print fabric and some plastic twist handles that look like they are wooden. I had plenty of lining fabric leftover from the handbags I made so that was nice and easy.

 I always tend to buy more fabric than I need, anyone else have that problem too?

I roughly followed the tutorial over on the Emmaline blog here.

I stitched in a large interior pocket to store smaller bits in. I ever remembered to sew one of my hadmade labels on the pocket as well.

Quite a roomy bag and I'm really impressed by it. Took me longer to whipstitch the fabric around the handles than to cut all the fabric out and make the basic shape of the bag!

My nan has a thing for giraffes and I managed to pick up a few giraffe buttons at the show without her realising so I've sewn them onto the internal pocket, see how long it takes her to notice them.

 Here's hoping the bag lives up to the expectation and it has many happy trips to the local knitting club my nan goes to. 

Been Making Totes

So I mentioned in my earlier post Elephant Make Up Bag that I was going to be making a lot of fabric presents for friends and family this year.. well here are the presents for the May birthday ladies.

The first tote was for my Mum and she has an obsession with hearts, so I used some of the leftover fabric I had from the apron I made her.

 The second tote was for a friend who works for VW so when I saw this super VW camper van fabric I knew I had to get some and make her something from it.

 I faffed about with where to cut the sections from the piece of fabric I had to make sure both sides had a full camper van on. As there's so many cool campers on the fabric I made sure both sides had a different coloured camper showing so she can decide which side should be showing depending what colour she likes on the day.

Great present to give people and really easy to whip up...can see a few more of these being given out as presents this year!

Skirt handbag

Been playing with the idea of making myself an unusual bag for a while and even with a broken sewing machine I still managed to make one that holds all my gear courtesy of my hand sewing :)
I used:

• A kids skirt that I got in primark for 50p in the sale months ago
• An old white tie to form the bag handles
• 4 chunky pink buttons
• Black zipper

Not an easy thing to handsew, or at least not with my limited/poor skills lol, but after many hours and stabbing my fingers to sew the buttons on (yes i forgot to add them till after i'd already sewn the handles on, they were a bit of an afterthought) I finally had a cute little skirt handbag of my own :)

I'm linking this to...

Fireflies & jellybeans - show your stuff

The shabby nest - frugal friday

A glimpse inside - catch a glimpse

a little lovely - saturday soiree

tatertots & jello - weekend wrapup party

finding fabulous - frugalicious friday

my repurposed life - catch as catch can

be different.. act normal - show and tell

blue cricket design - show and tell