Too Many Tote Bags–and why I just added another one

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If you are anything like me, you have accumulated quite a few tote bags over the years. Some came in the mail with solicitations, or as gifts from grateful charities. Some came with purchases, often with the logo of the store on them. Some were inherited from other people, and some were gifts. A few were even deliberate purchases!

That’s a LOT of totes. Cat shown for size.

And then there are the ones you make yourself.

If you look back in the archives, you’ll find I made a couple of bags in an effort to create the perfect grocery bag–portable, washable, easy to load. I didn’t succeed, but I had fun trying, till I decided the folding box-like bags from my local supermarket were probably better than what I was coming up with. Also, I needed to accumulate some plastic grocery bags for dealing with cat litter.

Since then, I made some mini-backpacks, but until recently, didn’t bother with tote bags. That changed when I bought some fabric with a print of polyhedral dice and wondered what I was going to make out of it. I thought about making my daughter a dice bag, to store her dice, but I figured she would already have one. A dice tray? But the point of using fun fabric is to see the print, and you wouldn’t want the confusion of a dice print when you are trying to see what you just rolled and whether your character is now in deep trouble.

I don’t remember why I decided to make her a “dice” bag–a tote bag with a dice print–but it offered a great opportunity to use a large enough piece of fabric to show off the print, and use another interesting print for lining. I also added a bit of fusible interfacing for structure. Here it is.

One thing leads to another, and I decided to make myself a “scrap bag”–not a bag FOR scraps, but a bag made FROM scraps. It could take the place of the bag currently holding my quilted pillow cover project. This bag would have some batting to add cushioning and shape, but since I had gotten a hand cramp working on the pillow cover, I decided I would NOT try to hand quilt the bag. A bit of machine stitching would have to do.

Originally I meant to make it more of a crazy-quilt style patchwork, but somehow ended up playing with a sort of Log Cabin arrangement.

I made a lot of mistakes as I went, most of which I documented in my new (ish) sewing log. For one, since I didn’t plan to hand-quilt, I used a piece of old sheet as backing. In retrospect, I should have used something lighter. Better yet, I should have used the lining as the backing and done a very little, not so tiny, hand stitching to hold it together. Or so I decided as I tried to machine-quilt a few lines and remembered that I am no good at it.

The sewing log

There were some other problems–how best to attach the handles, where exactly to stitch across the bottom corners to create a boxy bottom to the bag, and whether I ought to have some kind of trim along the top. (Yes, I should, but maybe not applied that way.)

All in all, though, I really like the bag. I used some colorful fabric that I love for the lining, having recently watched part of Youtube video by Bernadette Banner in which she admonishes her audience to USE YOUR GOOD FABRIC rather than saving it indefinitely for that perfect project that never comes along. After all, there is so much lovely fabric out there, you will surely discover yet more fabrics that speak to you, and you may not appreciate this particular one as much years from now as you do now.

You can just see the beautiful lining fabric peeking out.

As I think I’ve said before, I really like to make use of bits and pieces. Some people like to start with an idea and then look for the materials (and sometimes I do too,) while other people enjoy starting with the materials and looking for a project. Bags seem to be a good way to turn odd bits of fabric into something useful. Who knows, maybe I’ll make yet another tote bag this year. I’ve got plenty of fabric.

Till next post.

P.S. After seeing how many totes we have, we are getting rid of about eight of them.

Straw Into Gold–or, turning old jeans into a new denim vest

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I wrote this in April 2025, after having made the vest in January 2025. I meant to add more rhinestones and take new photos, but since that never happened, here’s the post.

One of the greatest delights of sewing, or indeed of crafts in general, is turning rubbish into something wonderful. I tend to save the usable parts of worn-out clothing, and I had accumulated a small pile of heavy denim from jeans that my husband had worn out. The pile had been sitting there waiting for a use to suggest itself, when I decided I really wanted to make something.

But what should I make?

Sometimes I start projects because I need a particular item–say, a pair of pants. Other times, I just want to make something and the material suggests the project. In this case, I was thinking about the denim and how people seem to love denim jackets. I’ve never had one. I’ve never even coveted one particularly. But the more I thought about the pile of denim scraps, the more I thought, “Maybe I should have a denim jacket!” And not any denim jacket, but one with rhinestones, because I just happened to have a Quickfix crystal applicator and a batch of crystals that were also in need of a project.

I browsed the internet looking for a suitable pattern (which was fun in itself) and settled on the Hampton Jacket. I bought a digital copy and had it printed at Staples to save myself the step of having to tape together a lot of sheets of paper.

When I laid out all my scraps, I realized that what with all the different bits and pieces to the pattern, maybe I didn’t actually have quite enough denim after all. The first things to go were the patch pockets. They were decorative, but I thought I might want to simplify a bit so the project wouldn’t take as long. Then I decided that using a different, lighter fabric for the inner pieces of the welt pockets might be a good idea, as it would reduce bulk. Even with those changes, though, I probably didn’t have quite enough denim.

But you know what? A denim vest is almost as cool as a denim jacket! Maybe even more so. And leaving out the sleeves also meant I wouldn’t have to attempt a flat-felled seam on a long tube of material, something I really wasn’t looking forward to anyway. So denim vest it would be!

Sewing the heavy denim actually went much better than I expected until I reached the buttonholes.There were supposed to be metal jeans buttons on the front, and buttonholes to match. I didn’t have the special jeans buttons and thought I might just use regular buttons (in retrospect, I realize there’s a good reason for jeans buttons when dealing with heavy denim), but I couldn’t sew the buttonholes. There was too much bulky seam and my sewing machine doesn’t deal well with unevenness when making buttonholes.

Hmm, what to do…

The other nice thing about having sewing skills is being able to change plans when needed. So, I couldn’t manage buttons. Maybe I could still find a way to sew a zipper onto the opening. It wasn’t a great solution, given the way the placket was designed, but I managed to add one. The zipper looks a bit odd, since there’s a loose flap over it, but the vest probably closes more easily than it would have if I’d had to fasten six or seven buttons. If I make this vest again in a different fabric, I think I might just find a way to substitute a zipper for the buttons anyhow.

The vest was done–almost! It still needed that final touch. I applied a lot of rhinestones–actually, it doesn’t look like a lot, but they took more time than I expected. I did have fun choosing some light blue, some dark blue, a few pink, and a whole lot of clear crystals. Being able to add crystals was one of the key reasons for this project, so I didn’t want to skimp.

How did it turn out?

Well, I was very pleased with how tidy the flat-felled seams looked and the overall design of the vest. It’s a bit long on me, I think, which I didn’t expect, and it feels oddly like armor. (Yes, that denim is heavy.) And of course the flap over the zipper is a bit strange.

Still, it’s made of honest-to-goodness pre-worn, genuinely broken-in denim! And the only thing I had to buy (besides the pattern, admittedly) was the zipper!

You don’t see my face in this photo, but I am smiling smugly.

Till next post.

Bathing With Dragons—repurposing a flannel sheet

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Recently I went through the stuffed linen closet with the goal of getting rid of extra sheets and towels. In particular, I needed to inventory the flannel sheets, which had multiplied for the simple reason that flannel sheets gradually go bald with use and then we end up getting a new set.

However, the top sheets—the flat sheets—take much longer to go bald than the fitted bottom sheets. So while I had several fitted sheets that were worn enough that I didn’t want to give them to the thrift shop, the matching flat sheets were still pretty nice.

Having a big piece of still-usable fabric sets me thinking about what I can make out of it. Flannel—I don’t want flannel pajamas, because flannel pajamas plus flannel sheets equals difficulty turning around in bed. Flannel pajama pant bottoms? I know people are wearing them, but to me they look like someone didn’t bother to get dressed yet.

A bathrobe! I have three bathrobes already, but I could use a lightweight summer robe. Plus, it wouldn’t be too complicated. I was going to use the sheet with the multicolored sheep, but the sheep were scattered too far apart for the best effect. Instead, I would use the sheet with the dragons.

After browsing some of the simple patterns available that were made mostly of rectangles, I decided that as long as I was going to sew a robe, I might as well make one with more shaping. I chose the Arbutus robe from Helen’s Closet. I downloaded the file, decided on size 8, and printed out the I-forget-how-many pages of pattern.

In future, for any pattern with large pieces, I think I will have it printed at Staples on big sheets and then transfer it to pattern material. I hate piecing together all those pages, even with the nifty Scotch tape runner adhesive that let me quickly overlap and stick sheets together faster than regular tape.

Then I needed to adjust the length. Oddly, after a section on lengthening/shortening, the pattern had a heading “How much should I add/remove?” in which it said “Generally, you want to add/remove the difference between your height and the height for which the pattern was drafted divided by two.” I puzzled over this—surely I should just shorten it by the difference?—and unfortunately decided that maybe I was missing some subtlety and went ahead and did as instructed. It was only after I was halfway through sewing and draped the robe over my shoulders that I discovered I could barely touch the pockets and it was ankle-length. On puzzling some more, I noticed that the section in question was next to a picture of the sleeves, which also needed shortening, but not as much as the body. Of course!

I do think the pattern should have been more clearly worded in that section, but I should also have had the basic sense to realize that I needed to shorten it the full five inches difference. D’oh!

So I had to unpick and re-place the pockets, and unpick the facing so I could cut 2.5 inches off the bottom. At least I discovered it in time to fix.

That wasn’t my only mistake, but the others were basic stuff like putting the wrong sides together before sewing. The shawl collar was particularly confusing for me, but in the end it worked out.

I also dislike the interfacing I used. It was pellon sheer-weight, and I thought it would be light enough, but it came out feeling very stiff compared to the very limp feel of uninterfaced flannel sheet. Next time, I’ll test the combination of fabric and interfacing ahead of time.

I took notes as I went, so if I sew another bathrobe, or use the pattern for some other purpose (there is a jacket version), I will hopefully not make the same mistakes. And I’ll know to make the sleeves even shorter than difference/two, so I don’t have to roll up the cuffs.

Here is the finished bathrobe. I like the dragons!

Till next post.