Thursday 17 April 2008

Tutorial Roundup - bags


I’ve been thinking about starting a semi-regular post where I share links to my favourite tutorials on other blogs. Hopefully this will serve two purposes – the first is to showcase some of the great free tutorials and patterns I’ve found out there in internet-land, the second is to allow me to easily find my favourite patterns ! Over the next few weeks I’ll focus on a different topic, either sewing or knitting.

So, the first in this series is bags. There are a huge number of great tutorials out there; the following are just some of my favourites:

1. Jordy Bag: When I first got back into sewing in a big way, the thing I started with was bags, specifically the Jordy Bag on Craftster. This is a great, very popular, beginner pattern for a lined square-bottomed bag. There are a lot of variations on Craftster to give you ideas of how to adapt the pattern to make it your own. This pattern can be easily adapted to make a basic tote bag by making it bigger and adding two small handles rather than one long handle.

2. The Wasp Bag (see picture above): one of my favourite patterns. I love the slouchy look of it and the pleats and round bottom mean you can stuff a lot of stuff in this bag! This has become my everyday handbag. The construction method used for this bag is slightly confusing, so I recommend you don’t attempt this pattern if you are a newbie sewer.

3. Triangular Cosmetics Bag: Another Craftster tutorial. I adapted this pattern slightly and made a lot of these for Christmas presents last year. Don’t be put off by the zip – the instructions include lots of pictures to guide you through.

4. One Hour bag: I have yet to make this one, but it looks super-easy and is a nice shape.

5. Hobo Bag: Another one on my to-do list.

6. Skipping/Bucket Bag. Great tutorial from Melissa of Tiny Happy. Another variation of the same shape of bag (slightly more complicated construction) can be found here at LulaLouise.

Many more bag tutorials can be found here on Craftster.


Hope you find these useful. If you have any other favourites, I'd love to hear about them. Happy sewing!

5 comments:

Miss Smith said...

Love that hobo bag! It's on my To Do list now as well. Thanks for sharing those great links. Happy sewing :)

tash* said...

oh you made a wasp bag! I have the pattern for that, and can't decide what part of my stash to cut into for it. LOVE your fabric - if only i could bring myself to pull the credit card out for some of my own! :)

Anonymous said...

I have made the Hobo bag (for a friend who lived in Johnsonville but now lives in Broome, Australia). It was my first bag and I found the instructions to be very good. I have attempted to put photos on flicker:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/23264112@N03/2426990037/in/photostream/

kimberlee said...

great Idea, I like it!

Kate said...

Great wasp bag!