Sew

Two re-usable shopping bag tutorials

I’ve made two re-usable shopping bags from free tutorials.

The first shopping bag was from Annie Get Your Glue Gun!‘s compact tote bag:

Compact tote bag, uncompacted.
Compact tote bag, uncompacted.

Compact tote bag stored in the pouch.
Compact tote bag stored in the pouch.

 

A few notes on the pattern:

  • The straps are quite thin so turning them can take a bit of perseverance.
  • At step 3 when you’re attaching the straps, make sure you’re attaching them to the 14″ side, check that you haven’t left a twist in the strap, and if you’re picky about seams and you’ve carefully ironed it to sit slightly on one side of strap then you need to lay the seam side down against the wrong side of the fabric so that it will be on the underside when the bag is finished.
  • At step 7 for the cord casing I only sewed the length of the folded piece of fabric, combined with perhaps some wonky fabric cutting and not using a large enough side seam allowance, I ended up with a less cleanly joined side than is shown in step 11. I think I need to experiment next time but I think it would have looked okay to keep sewing all the way to the end of the fabric on step 7.
  • I didn’t have a cord stop so I’ve left the ends free (and fraying, oops!) until I get one.

The main fabric has tiny little strawberries on it which I picked for the quirkiness. When I took the bag for a test-run I got a large smile from the checkout person as I unfolded my little creation. Success!

I had a big battle with my sewing machine while I made the first bag. I tried cleaning my sewing machine, re-threading a dozen times, changing the tension, and changing the needle but in the end I think the problem was using the wrong thread because the sewing machine was humming along happily when I made the second bag. Argh! That’ll teach me.

For the second shopping bag I used Zaaberry’s fold-up tote:

Fold-up tote, unfolded.
Fold-up tote, unfolded.
Fold-up tote, folded (but not folded quite as small as the one shown in the tutorial).
Fold-up tote, folded (but not folded quite as small as the
one shown in the tutorial).

 

A few notes on the pattern:

  • This was very quick to sew but there are a few raw-ish edges if you don’t like those types of things. I don’t mind them in this bag because the bag is light and perfect to keep on hand for small spontaneous shopping.
  • The straps are quite short so I don’t think this one will work as a shoulder-carrier, more as a bag to hold in my hand (it hasn’t been out for a test-run yet).
Edit: here’s a picture of the properly folded fold-up tote
Fold-up tote, properly folded.
Fold-up tote, properly folded.