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Time: 2h00

reversible tote bag partly from t-shirts
i have made this bag in my head like a million times, and still it was kind of hard when i did it for real... the thing is that i didn't notice at first all the uneven edges, and that's what took me the most time to fix and/or work around. i wonder if i should get one of those rotary cutter things and maybe use a ruler? i guess that's what the clue-full people do!

the prints were remnants that were also on clearance (yay!) and all the solid colors are old t-shirts. i actually took apart some favorite shirts for this project, mainly because they were good colors but i didn't like the way they fit anymore. i saved the motifs from the fronts to appliqué onto other stuff, though!

oh yeah, the why of this bag... it is for my swap partner for the francophone swap, and it's an extremely late "extra" ... except it's not an extra because i promised it ... the thing was, i forgot the swap was only 4 pts so when it came time to send, i sent my 4 pts and kept working on this in my head.

ok sorry that was so long... here are pics...

one side:

other side:

i realize it was a bit silly of a noob sewer to try something like this out of knits, when i don't know what i am doing.
also i realize that knits are not the greatest for a tote bag
but those 2 prints just called her name when i saw them during the swap, so what could i do?!

ah well... my partner is also learning to sew and so if it comes apart, she can fix it

ETA: if anybody wanted to make one similar (only without my mistakes) ...
all you would do is:

Posted by NataLuna • Published 13th May 2010 • See NataLuna's 3 projects »

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Youghurt Jaja favorited Reversible Tote Bag 08 Aug 00:40

Step 1
cut parallel strips of your cloths (as long as roughly twice as wide as you want the bag to be).
Step 2
sew them together (i ended up also topstitching them once or twice depending on which one it was)
Step 3
then construct the bag as a tube, which you then sew shut on the bottom.
Step 4
make sure your 2 reversible sides are the same!! this is important.
Step 5
then you make those funny perpendicular seams at all the corners to make the bottom of the bag happen.
Step 6
i sewed the straps to the pink side first, but i don't know if you would need to.
Step 7
line up the 2 sides one inside the other and pin. i put the side seam of the pink side opposite to the side seam of the blue side, so that all that thickness wouldn't be only on one side (mainly for sewing the straps on and not wanting to sew through all that layers)
Step 8
also line up the straps so they go in far enough between the 2 sides to where you can sew them on well for strength. i only had a certain length of strap or i would have gone further down.
Step 9
sew the 2 sides together. i top-stitched the 2 sides together... once from the blue side and once from the pink side... i would not know how to do it so that seam didn't show, but i'm sure somebody else could.

this turned out floppier than i intended, especially on the top edge. it might benefit from some kind of attachment there, but i couldn't decide on one, and plus, as a tote... maybe it doesn't need one? not sure on that.