shoofly's bag

Shoofly finally got the bag I made for her, so now I can share it with you guys without spoiling the surprise.

The brief from her was that she likes to carry a very small bag, 6x7 inches with a 51inch strap, and a zipper to close it. (She must wear it across her body with the bag part sitting at hip height). She mentioned that she prefers subdued colours and that she normally wears plain colours, (not a bright pattern person). I looked up her bio and found out that her favourite colour is green, so I started there.

Rather than using patterns as the main feature, I wanted to focus more on interesting fabric textures (but still keep it subtle).

I’ve had the soft olive green Egyptian cotton in my stash for a while. It has a lovely almost fluffy-flannelette feel to it, but you wouldn’t know this unless you touched it.
The main body area of the bag (the purple and brown) was loosely inspired by Shoofly’s recent shoe purchase.
I was a very happy shopper the day I bought the purple fabric. It’s a raw Indian pure silk usually costing around $70 a meter, but I managed to pick it up for half the price! There’s no other way to describe it but sublime. It once again feels soft and almost fluffy, and you’d never really guess it was silk as it has more of a linen look to it.
(Shoofly: Because of this silk you won’t be able to chuck the bag in the washing machine, unfortunately it’s dry clean only).

I added a very dark brown velvet ribbon, once again inspired by the shoes.

Back to the front flap…

The leaf fabric is a vintage piece of upholstery fabric that I have a few small scraps of. It was left over from the cushions of a cane lounge we had in our house when I was a child (when we lived in the hot, tropical, rainforresty, north end of Australia). I’ve sewn some light blue lines over the top for decoration, and left one of the edges unfinished. The other edge is bound with a bit of the bag strap (to make it more coherent), it comes beyond the bottom edge to make it easy to grab when opening the bag. I’ve also sewn on some buttons to tie all of the colours together, add weight and give a cute crafty look.

Engineering wise, this was the trickiest bag I’ve made so far, (I don’t use patterns when I sew, or recipes when I cook – mind you I probably should get a recipe book as I’m not very good at cooking at alllll).
Because the silk is quite delicate I lined the entire bag in a strong pre-washed calico, and also a thin layer of wadding to give it body and make it sit in the right shape (not go floppy and have the rounded corners sit round, even when there was stuff in the bag).



There were a few annoying yet common traits about small bags that I really wanted to avoid. Even though it’s small I wanted it not to be squishy so I added an inch of depth (which I lined with heavy weight interfacing to keep it sitting square). I also wanted to make sure that it was easy to get your hand in there; there’s nothing worse than a small bag that you have to force your hand in and out of. To avoid this I made the zip extend an inch down either side of the bag, not just along the top, to make the opening larger.

The lining is a cute pyjama like print, which once again ties the green and purple together. I prefer light coloured lining in my bags, it make it easier to find stuff.
And finally the strap is a subdued blue with a purple-ish pattern.

Shoofly has told me that she loves it (and I can’t tell you how relieved I am).
I had heaps of fun making it, and I hope she wears it every day!