Back To Recycling - New Tote Bag

Finally, I'm at the point where I had a little time to take out the leftover denim pieces from the times when I was making bags and see what I have. It was quite shocking to see ho much I still have, but this is not necessarily a bad thing. For me, this is not waste or garbage as others would look at it. These are treasures and you'll see why.

When I saw how much fabric I still have, I thought I have two option. One, sell it as bulk as there are many who do that on Vinted. Two, make something out of it and sell the finished product.

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Because I'm here, in the needlework community, you can already guess what I chose and why. To be honest, I could not sell it as I love sewing, have a lot of ideas and this is treasure for me, so I decided to start creating instead of just getting rid of it.

The truth is, I missed sewing a lot and am happy to be able to get back to creating. Seeing so many leftover pieces brought a lot of ideas and now that there's a market I can use, it was time to get back to it.

Among the leftovers there were some pieces I was working on when I pushed all aside, so I thought let's start with those, so this bag is a result of that.

This is the back of the bag and as you can see, it is made of so many different pieces, but after I took this photo, made some changes, removed the golden stitches as it looked bad. Not that I'm an artist, but now I understand them, that they are never satisfied with their work and it's hard to decide, when it is finished.

This is the front of the bag, made of many stripes of different colors. I love this shabby look and it looks good as a bag, but I had to make some changes, till I got here as the first attempt was something different. It's a 40cm x 42cm piece.

The bag is made of bits and pieces and the interface is also made of pieces 😆 Yes, I cheat a little, because this is a technique you can use with the interfacing. I love using interfacing as it makes the bag keep its shape better. It adds to the cost as it's not cheap (I have just ordered some), but I can't (don't want to) work without it. I was always told "If you do something, so it right" and that's the right way.

And this is where the dilemma began. I was thinking, should I add a pocket or a label? You don't want to overcrowd it as it looks bad, so I decided to go with the pocket only and it was a good decision.

Carry straps are always a bit of stress for me. It's not easy to make them right and if you don't do it right, it looks awful. My usual method is to use a 7.5cm wide strap, with 5cm wide interface inside, in the middle, but this time I saw a video with a different technique.

These straps are 10 cm wide, 76cm long and no interface. It's four-fold, so no interface was needed and I can tell you, it works.

I was really satisfied with the result. I think these are the best stripes I've ever made.

For the lining, I had a shirt I bought for pennies at the second hand shop, 100% cotton, a very good quality and nice blue (the camera does some injustice here), so I did some magic to save the embroidered part and the pockets.

So I merged the front.

And here it is, in all its splendor 😂 This is the front, as it has the pocket, but not mandatory, you can choose to wear the other side as front too.

This way you don't get bored of it so easily.

Has 6 pockets in total. 1 on the outside and 5 on the inside. All my bags have a lot of pockets on the inside as I think it's useful to store all kinds of things.

It is listed for sale, but for some reason, it got the attention of the platform and it is waiting for approval. I'm curious to see what potential buyers think of it, if there will be someone interested to buy it. I hope so.

So this is it for today. Onto the next one!

If you're a newbie, you may want to check out these guides: