After making several totes and purses from patterns and tutorials, I decided to try my own. I based it off of a few I had seen around the internet, they looked pretty simple, but still had a few good features. My first attempt I planned for my IPad, so I lined it with flannel for protection, but since it was my first one, I made it with less expensive material I found at Wal-Mart. I made matching bias tape to hide where I sewed the zipper straight onto the sides of the bag, something I fixed in later versions.
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| (The fabric has glitter on it and is very bright and bold. I had someone ask if it was a Vera Bradley!!) |
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| (Inside pocket ended up being too small to hold much of anything) |
The next one was for my sister-in-law that loves purple. I made the front pocket a little bigger, the inside pocket bigger, and the zipper is more finished, with a tab on the end. This is probably fabric I found at Joann's...I can't remember where all my fabric is from anymore!
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| (Pretty purple batik fabric!) |
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| (Not sure what my camera did the to the fabric colors, but you can see I lined the pocket with the lining fabric) |
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| (Dark inside picture - sorry this is a few cameras ago!) |
After doing those two, I took a break from the pattern, but when I got involved in a swap for Christmas, and saw a similar purse on her Pinterest board, I decided to make one more. This time I went out of my usual color zone and picked yellow and grey (her favorite colors). The chevrons weren't too bad to align, but I did switch the direction of the pocket for that reason.
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| (Not usually a fan of yellow, but this grew on me!) |
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| (I left the zipper tab off of one end, so it can open wider) |
And just because I felt it was a little plain, I did some decorative stitches on the zipper gusset and added a zipper pull.
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| (It needed a little something, so I made a shrinky dink zipper pull. MUSTACHE!!) |
Your bags look great! How exciting that you're beginning to "design" on your own. :) I think your zipper pull is awesome--I was contemplating that very idea a couple of days ago, and when I saw yours, I knew it was one to try. Yours is just perfect for the bag you made.
ReplyDeleteJust an FYI--I'm not a professional photographer, but I can tell you what worked for me when I was photographing something purple (the color went weird on me, too). When I had green grass as the backdrop, the color was bluish, but when I had a bright pink in the background, the color was much truer. Kinda made me wonder if there was a correlation (I'm sure there is).
The Christmas swap sounds fun, too! :)
Krista
Thanks! It's just a simple pattern, I just see so many awesome patterns I want to try, so there's not a huge need for me to design my own. ;)
DeleteDon't forget to seal your zipper pull! I did mine with sharpie and it was rubbing off on my hands, so I put clear nail polish on it. Probably a real sealant would work even better!
Thanks for the tip, I'm sure I'll be taking lots more purple pictures in the future since it's one of my favorite colors! ;)