One Hour Handbag

Made this handbag tonight, a very quick project!

The reason I made it was that I found this cute handbag in an op-shop a few years ago and have used it so much that it's started to look very old and grotty.

So I decided to make a NEW one! This meant destroying it in order to use its handles and get the pattern shape right, but oh well. It had its time. I probably could've done it without unpicking it and using it as a pattern, but it would've involved a lot more guess work. You CAN buy bag handles from the craft store but they charge ruinous amounts for them, which is an outrage. Might as well fork out for a new bag!
Anyway so once I'd chosen some new fabric and unpicked the old bag, I laid it out on my new fabric and cut the two halves of the inner and outer. Didn't try and follow it too exactly as this is a lovely forgiving bag that totally won't show any wonky seams!

Then I sewed four darts along the top on the outside pieces. I used the old bag to line up where to put them but didn't measure them very exactly or check they were all the same size. I pressed all the darts facing out from the centre.

I sewed the two outside halves together and gave those seams a quick press. Then I folded the bottom two corners outwards, sewed them flat, and trimmed like so:

closeup of corners in case you're confused...

That's just to give the bag a nicer shape, you don't necessarily have to but it's a bit sort of 2-D if you don't.

Next I made a pocket for the inside, which pretty much just involved sewing two rectangles of the lining fabric together, turning inside out, pressing, & sewing onto one of the sides like so:

Then I sewed the two lining halves together & clipped the corners, same as the outside except no darts. Also I left a big hole at the bottom seam, for turning it inside out later. Has to be big enough to fit the bag handles through!



Right, now we come to the two hardest bits! First, you have to put right sides of the bag together and sew them at the side seams here:

This is mainly only tricky at that middle junction where four seams are trying to line up together, you'll probably have to do a bit of clipping in the corners to make it lie flat. Don't stress too much about it, if it looks puckery you can always unpick it later when the bag's finished and hand-sew it.

The next tricky bit is sewing in the handles. You have to insert the handle and THEN sew the final seam, because the handle's circular so it won't work any other way.

Don't forget to fold the ends out so that they will be under when the bag is turned right way out.

 Then it's pretty much done! Turn it all right way out using the hole at the bottom of the lining and admire. Then sew up the hole in the bottom of the lining. If you wanted it to look perfect you could hand-sew it, but if you're bone idle and lazy like me you could just pinch the seam together and sew it wrong-way-out on the sewing machine.
The final step is to tack the fabric close to the handles. This pretty much has to be done by hand but it's fairly quick, you just slip the needle in between the layers and then come out every now and then for a stitch to pull the fabric in close to the handle.

Ta-daaa! Pretty pleased. Looks even better than the old one.