How to sew a very simple quilted bag. stylish handbag craft bag

Welcome back to Christine's Home Affairs. You guys already know what today's project is but I haven't got a clue. I received a package in the mail a couple of weeks ago. I did know it was coming and it's from Ivona who is a professional longarm quilter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the US. Her business name is Quilt Tops by Ivona. She emailed me letting me know that she's quilted some pieces of fabric for me to have a play with. So I'm interested to see what pieces of fabric have come and then try to work out a project that I can come up with to use these pieces. So there's quite an assortment. All right let's have a look. I've got to say this quilting is gorgeous and there's a lot of fabric in here too. Well I should just cheat and make myself a quilt shouldn't I? But I won't. Oh wow this is huge. Oh look at that. Okay looks like I've got a few projects here. Let me show you the back first or what I think is the back. Oh I'm looking at this side and it's just stunning. But have a look at the quilting on here. It's just beautiful. So on this side you've got some nice big leaves and on the other side it looks like we've got some geometric shapes. Let me show you the other side of the fabric. These ones over here look like the jelly roll strips or two and a half inch strips that have been pieced together again and then the geometric quilting has been done on the one side and this one here is a whole cloth with a beautiful blue fabric on one side, the brown on the other. The quilting is absolutely beautiful. So it's not a printed fabric. This is the stitching that's over a solid piece of fabric. Gorgeous. Well there's a few projects I'm going to be coming up with for this. Just not sure what they are yet. A couple of pieces that are 15 by 17 inches. Looks like it's some kind of furnishing fabric. Really nice quilting. I can certainly put those to good use. I can put all of it to good use and this one here with the stripes on the other side. I have got a lot of fabric here to make lots of projects. I can see lots of bags coming on. Can't you? I'm going to set this aside, have a good think about what I'm going to do with it. Obviously you guys already know what today's project is. I do not have a single clue. I'll go and set it aside, have a good think about what I want to make with something and I'll be right back. Probably take me a couple of weeks. Okay so it's a little while later and I've come up with a project for the first bag that I'm going to make with all that quilted fabric. And this is the bag here. It's got an adjustable strap so that you can make it as a shoulder bag or a crossbody bag and lots of room inside. The needle size I'm using is 110 slash 18. Just the little magnet that I keep my needles on when they're in use. But that doesn't mean you have to use that size. I've used the number 90 or 110 for literally hundreds of bags that I've made with upholstery fabric. So you just need to go a little bit slower and be a little bit more carefully sewing so that you don't break your needles. Let's get to it. I've decided to work with these two pieces. So they were the smallest in the lot and they originally measured 15 by 17 inches. I've trimmed back to 14 by 17 inches which is 35 by 43 centimeters. And rather than making something small with just one piece of fabric I thought I'd put these two together in the one bag. So we have two pieces. Up to you if you want to use two identical pieces of fabric or have something different. So you've got the measurements for those. And for the lining we need two pieces at the same size. I'm going to be using webbing for my handles and the straps on the side of the bag that is one inch wide or two and a half centimeters. I'll be using a continuous zip today because I don't have a regular zip to use. That'll be trimmed back a little bit. I've got a scrap of fabric that's the same width as the zip. We just need two pieces that are about three inches long or six centimeters. Two zipper pulls if you have them. And then I've got two rectangular rings and a slide adjuster thingamajig. They're both one inch wide or two and a half centimeters. And that's all. Let's start. The first thing I'm going to do is put tabs on the end of my zip and I need to figure out what length I need the zip to be. My seam allowance is one centimeter or three-eighths of an inch. I don't want the zipper teeth to encroach on this area in any way at all. So I've got one centimeter here. I'm going to add an additional one and a half centimeters on each side. From the outside edge we've got one centimeter plus one and a half centimeters. And to make it even easier it's just one inch. Your zip needs to be two inches or five centimeters shorter than the width of your fabric and in this case the finished length of the zip is 15 inches. So once you've trimmed your zip down to 15 inches we'll grab our tab, fold the fabric in half with the right sides facing. If this were a printed piece of fabric I would have the printed facing together, place the fabric over the end of the zip, or let's actually put our sliders on first. I've been caught before. To put your slide on, separate the teeth, take the curved edge, place that gently over the end, grab the other end, line that up, and you want to line it up so that the tape at the top lines up evenly. Give it a push. You'll hear the click and that slides on really easily. It does take a few goes. This worked first go for me. Often I'll do several attempts. So you want the zipper head to be sitting nice and evenly inside the area here. You don't want to have your fabric kinking out. On this end here make sure your zipper tape is nice and straight and we'll repeat. Sit that gently over the end. I've got the zipper tape between my thumb and finger here. Just give it a push and that one's kinked just a little bit so I'm going to redo that. You can see how the tape on this side is up by one tooth and that's because I didn't line it up perfectly. So that's much better here and much better there. Okay, now we can put the tab on. Fold your fabric in half, place it over the end of your tape, clip it, and we'll do the same with the other end. That's it. This now can go to the machine and be sewn straight across here on both ends. You don't need to come with me. I'll quickly go and do that now. All right, so there's our zipper end finished. All you need to do is fold out your fabric and you've got a really nice neat zipper tab. If I just open one side of the flap out, the white line that you see there is a stitching line which is the end of my zipper tab and then the fabric underneath extends beyond the edge of my lining fabric. So there's plenty of room here to sew my side seam without the bulk of the zip being in the way. You would fold the other flap out as well. Let's attach this to our fabric pieces. So you want to centre your zip across your fabric and make sure you've got an even distance between the end of your zipper tabs here. Line that up evenly. Have your zip sliders faced down over your outer fabric and then you grab your lining fabric, place that over the top and clip it all together. Out comes my double-sided tape, much easier to use. Place my zip directly over the top, line up the top edge of the zipper tape and run another strip of tape on the top of that and place my lining over the top. Line up the and then the top and once you've secured those layers together, flip it over. We'll take this to the machine, put your zipper foot on and sew with the quilted side faced up. I like to just run my finger along the top edge of the zip here and you can see the little ridge that I've made here and that gives me a nice guide for my zipper foot that way I can sew as close to the teeth as I can. Move your sliders out of the way as you get to them. All right, that side's done. We won't be doing the top stitching just yet because I do want to increase my stitch length so all you need to do is press the lining fabric away from the zip and bring it around to the other side and when we do the top stitching you'll have your lining to the back, your outer in front of it and when you top stitch you're going to top stitch from the edge of this zipper tab here. You don't want to top stitch at the end. Start here, sew along until you get to the other side of your tab here and you'll stop where the tab and the zip meet. You just want to stitch between these two areas here. It'll give you a neater finish when you do your side seams later. Now that we've done that, grab the other piece of fabric and I'll run a strip of tape across that. We'll place the other side of the zip directly over the top. Line up the side edges of your fabric and then bring that up to the top of your fabric and grab another bit of tape. If you don't have tape just use clips or pins and pin all the layers together. The other piece of lining goes over the top. Once again line up these side edges and then the top. Let's go back to the machine. I will sew again with the quilted side faced up. Once we've stitched the lining in place we'll open it out and we'll top stitch both sides of the zip in between the zipper tab but I will increase my stitch length. I've sewn the zip in place using a 2.8 millimeter stitch length. I've changed my stitch length for the top stitching to 4. So I have my lining underneath my outer fabric on each side. I've got my needle lined up with the edge of the tape here and I'm going to sew about an eighth of an inch just a fraction more or about three or four millimeters from the edge here and I'll stop sewing where the tab and the zip meet and I'll repeat for the other side. All right that's our top stitching done. That's looking nice and neat. Now before I forget I'm going to open my zip here because I have a terrible habit of forgetting to do that. So I'll leave that open and now I need to measure for my boxed corners. I'll take my outer fabric and my lining fabric and we'll separate those and we're also going to line up the side edges to prepare them to be stitched up. Bring the outer fabric together until those folded edges line up on the top here. Secure that in place and we don't need to go all the way to the end just yet. We just want to secure the top half and we can do the same with the lining. So this tab now will go over to the lining side. Repeat for the other side. I'll just push that tab to the lining side and make sure those folded edges meet up. I've just secured the top section in place for the time being whilst we measure up for our box corners. From the outside edge we're going to measure two and a half inches or six centimetres. Mark yourself a little box at the corner. We'll do the same for the lining and then we can cut out our boxes. Now we're going to sew up our side seams on both sides but we're not going to sew up the bottom edges just yet. We've still got to put our handles into the side seam. So let's go and sew up the sides. Whenever I'm working with a lot of layers here, especially when there's a lot of bulk, rather than starting at one end and sewing all the way down to the other, I'd actually rather start right at the top edge where the zipper tab is. Then I can make sure that these edges in here aren't going to shift. So what I'm going to do is place this section of fabric underneath my zipper foot and I'll bring the needle down so that it keeps those layers in place. Then I know that that's going to line up evenly at the top. Then I'll come down and sew the outer fabric in place and then I'll flip it over and I'll actually start from here and sew back the other way and that'll secure the ends of the bag as well as giving me a nice neat edge here. So I'm lined up to do my one centimetre or three eighth inch seam and I'll bring my needle down here right into all of those layers and then this fabric isn't going to shift as I start sewing, at least not at the top. I can do a back stitch here and then just continue on to the end and back stitch at the end. Remember we're not going to be sewing the bottom edge closed just yet. I'll flip this around and before I do the lining I'll line up the edge along here as well, bring my needle down again and start sewing. Now I can do the lining. If you have a look at the outer fabric you can see that that's lined up beautifully just along here. With the outer fabric you can see that it kind of bubbles out and that's because we didn't top stitch that layer of fabric all the way across. By not doing that you've got less bulk because of your seam across here so you didn't have to stitch right across there but you still want that fold to kind of sit up as you go along. So from here I'm going to start sewing on the outer fabric that way it reinforces this top edge. What I'm doing here is that fold across here I'm just going to carry that along and that will sit nicely there. Underneath I'm just going to use a screwdriver or tweezers and push that fabric underneath so that fold goes to the back and this one I'll push forward, hold it in place and once you've stitched over that fold you can go back one or two stitches and then everything's nice and even again and then you can continue on down. And I'll do the same on this side so I'll start about here, keep my needle down and just push that layer of lining underneath the zipper tab. This one here I'll push over the top. All right our side seams are done. What we can do is turn this the right way out. You needn't worry about the top edge where the zip is at the moment. We're going to sew our webbing onto the side seam. Let's take our seam on the inside and we'll fold that open. I want to have this sitting nice and flat so I'm going to go along with the sewing machine and just stitch these side edges and I'll only go up as far as I can. This is just going to help everything sit a little bit flatter when I put my webbing onto the side. I have my fabric under the machine as far back as it will comfortably go. The raw edge is along the bottom here. I'll secure one side in place and then I'll go up the other. So what that's done is top stitched around the seam line. It's not going to be seen when we put our webbing on though. I'll repeat for the other side as well. I've cut out two strips that are 13 inches and I'm going to run a strip of double-sided tape up the center of both of these pieces from the bottom edge up to here. We've got eight inches and that's as far as we need to go with our double-sided tape. When I'm using double-sided tape for the zips I use one that can be sewn over and it doesn't cause any gumming up of my needles. For this one here I like to use something that's really strong but you can't stitch over it because it'll gum up your needles. So I'll run the tape down the center. You can use the good stuff as well. It's just not as tacky. The one that is really strong is one that you can't sew over but it's really good for keeping things in place whilst you sew around it. Remove the paper and let's grab our bag. Place the directly over that seam and with that secured in place we can stitch up the long edge, come up to the eight inches. If you can get that far, if it's too difficult then you can stop further down and then sew across back and forward again and then come back down on this side. We'll repeat for the other side. We can take these to the machine now and sew up both side edges and the top. It's easier to have your bag facing inside out so you've got the wrong side or the outside facing you. That way you can just move this top layer of fabric out of the way and sew up along the side here. Backstitch along here and then turn and come back down the other side and same again for the other side. Okay we've got the webbing attached to the side of our bag. Let's close up the bottom and then we can box the corners. We'll sew straight across the bottom edge here and on the lining we are going to sew across the bottom as well. Leave a generous opening along the bottom here. Backstitch here and come forward until you've got a good size opening of about your hand's width in the middle there. Backstitch, move on up and repeat for the outer fabric and now we can box the corners. Before we do that if you've got any excess tape along the edge you can trim that back and just tidy up any loose edges. All right let's take this opening here. We've already got the seam stitched open on one side with our webbing there and this side here Today we're going to open up our seam so that there's less bulk. Normally I like to fold them in opposite directions but because this side is open I'll open this side clip that together and line up those edges and we'll sew straight across here and we'll do that for all four corners of the bag. So with the lining we've got our opening along the bottom there I've boxed the corners here rather than opening the seams on my lining. I folded the seam to one side and on the other side I folded it to the opposite side. I've done the same down here. When we sew up the corners on the bag on the outer fabric we've got the extra layer of the webbing underneath so there's going to be quite a lot of bulk and even though I'm using a much thicker thread than I normally would I'm still going to triple stitch over that area. Let's go do that now. We'll also backstitch at the beginning and the end and like I said over the seam intersection here we'll triple stitch. Now whilst we're at the machine I'm going to take this lining piece here and follow on up the side of the bag and meet up with the boxed corner on the other end. So I'll take this boxed corner bring that down to this one and I'll place those together so it's just one continuous row all the way up and around on the side seam. Bring them together and I'm going to stitch those together so that it stays in place inside the bag. It'll stop the lining from flapping about too much. It's completely unnecessary but I just wanted to do that. With the boxed corner on the other side I'll do the same. Follow that seam all the way across to this seam here and find the boxed corner at the other end and just fold that up to this one and do that again. So you don't have to go and sew the lining onto the outer fabric it's just going to be easier when I turn this the right way out. Let's find our opening and bring the bag through, poke out the corners at the bottom of your bag and at the top of your bag get inside the lining and just poke that out. Once you've poked out all your corners and your zipper tabs get into your lining, pinch these edges together and top stitch. So that's our bag done and now we can finish the handles. So far our bag is finished. What we need to do is finish the handles on the side. These straps here is where we're going to put our rectangle things and on the zip I've got a couple of zip pulls that I like to put on the top of my zips. You can get these in packs of a hundred from Amazon and in lots of different colours as well so they just make it easier to grab hold of your zips and let's put these things on the end. So this just needs to go over the webbing, fold the raw edge of the webbing over just by say about half an inch and then fold it over again and stitch across here and you'll do the same for the other side. Fold the webbing in toward the bag that way you won't have the bulk showing on the outside of the handle and make sure they're the same size as you have on the other side and we can sew that in place as well. We also need our webbing for the shoulder strap. The sizing of this is going to be up to you. You may just want a short strap where you can carry it over your arm or you might want to carry it as a crossbody bag. So if you make it adjustable that'll be much easier for you. So I've cut another length of webbing which is about 62 inches or about a meter fifty five but really you can make this any length you like. You can always chop it down to size if it's too big. I've just realized I forgot to label this. How frustrating! Once you've sewn this grab your webbing and feed that through the other side of the ring and we'll do the same thing. We'll fold the webbing under and again that's for that side and then we'll pop our slider on bring the webbing through. So if we have a look at it from this side here we've got our handle attached along here keeping the webbing nice and straight. I've popped the webbing through and the middle section of the slide is underneath. Keep on going and then coming from the outside of the handle feed that through keeping it nice and straight. We've got our adjustable slide over this side. Just manipulate the webbing so that you've got some room to move on the inside here. Bring this in through the left side and that raw edge that you've just brought through bring it back through to the other side of the slider. It'll pop through like that. You can straighten that out again. So at the moment what we have is the handle nice and even coming all the way through up under and around and then we have our raw edge here. Fold that under and sew it onto this section here and when you sew that section closed you'll have the raw edges on the inside of those folds. Now I've put my zipper foot on here because it allows me to get closer to the edge of the ring. I'll just sew across that a few times and then sew the bottom edge in place as well and repeat that for the rest of them. All right I've managed to get my label on so there it is at the front there. We've got our box corners underneath with the webbing stitched into the seam and coming up along the side seam and you've still got plenty of room at the top here. Coming into the zip and a nice big opening bag inside there. I didn't put a pocket in here today. I didn't even give it a thought so you could easily go and put a nice recessed zippered pocket or just a nice slip pocket in there as well. Plenty of room for that but there's heaps of room inside this bag here and the crossover between the colors works really well because you've got that contrast on the side here. So I think that's a great way to use up a couple of pieces of fabric, make something a little bit bigger out of it and we've got our adjustable shoulder straps. So you can wear this as a crossbody bag. You can have the straps shortened all the way and just have this over your arm as well. I kind of like the two tones. You'll be able to match your outfit. So what do you think? It's quite a spacious bag. I've got the shoulder straps adjusted so that it's at its shortest length which just means that I can sit it over my shoulder like this and carry it around like this if I wanted to and likewise I can extend it as much as it will go, pop it over my head and use that as a crossbody bag. So you've got plenty of options with the bag handle as it is. I prefer to have mine a little bit shorter and just sling it over my shoulder. I love the quilted effect of this fabric. I think that's come up a treat and also using the two-tone fabric as well. So completely different shades. You've got your greys and blues on one side and your creams and fawns on the other but breaking it up with that black stripe down the side I think works really well with the bag. Thanks so much to Ivona for sending me this fabric. It's absolutely stunning. The quilting just really enhances the bag. I will pop Ivona's details in the description down below and also in the comment section. This isn't a bag that I'm going to start making to sell. Chris told me the other day that there's just not enough room in the shop for me to have my bigger bags so I reckon his big tools need to go. What do you think? Anyway, I'm happy making the small crossbody bags and things like that. What will I put on this in the shop? I probably will sell this one because I usually do sell my one-offs. I don't know, I might put about $65 on this in the shop as it is now. It doesn't have any pockets in there. So I hope you've enjoyed this video and I shall catch you next time. Bye for now.