My new purse

Meet my two new purses.  Well, they are more like my “everything bags.”  They each can serve as an everyday, casual purse, or a toy bag, or a light grocery bag…you name it!  I recently mentioned Rae Hoekstra’s awesome blog: Made by Rae – which is where I got this pattern from.  She has several free patters on her site…unfortunately this is not one of them.  You do have to pay for it, but it is very reasonable ($6!).  So, unlike my norm, I decided to buy the pattern, because it looked super cool (and because I like to support fellow enterpreunerial moms!).

So these are my results!  I didn’t start off planning on making two right away.  But I realized that the two fabrics I originally picked (the apples and the orange polka dots) really didn’t look right together.  So I cut two more pieces of fabric, and made two bags – which I am totally happy with.  One is a more calm, subtle, relaxed bag with light colors, while the other is more bright, and OPEN YOUR EYES colors!

This was the first time I had ever used Ric Rac – not bad!  I like the touch it gives.

The one thing I found difficult about the pattern, was sewing the cross seams on the edges of the bottom of the bag.  Well, the difficult part (or maybe I should say “tricky”) was getting that seam to be perpendicular to the main midline bottom seam.  On two of my four fabrics, I ended up making very lopsided and slanted seams – doesn’t look so hot.  But on my second go around, I did a much better job.  I guess practice really does make perfect.

If you like what you see, check out Rae’s blog, buy the pattern and then make one for yourself and a friend too!