Month 5 in the Zo geknipt sewalong, and project 12 to sew: a medium-sized shoulder bag. Good timing, since my own handbag had given up on me, and I’ve been using hubby’s man bag for over a month now.

I’d carefully chosen the fabric for this bag: I was going to go for the golden autumn fabric I had, and use black cotton as contrast colour. I could already see the result right in front of me.

Alas, turned out the fabric wasn’t wide enough. Actually, it turned out that the greater part of all the fabric I have lying around wasn’t wide enough.

Fortunately, the pile of fabric that my cousin gave me had the answer: a piece of reddish pink denim. Also a nice match for the black cotton.

Since the fabric was just the one plain colour, it looked rather dull. So I decided to add some spice, and I cut out a frame.

Then, I added part of the lining to the frame.

To avoid that my bag would become the usual trash bag in which I have to dig deeply to find what I need, I thought long and hard about how I could organise all the junk I tend to carry around.

On the one side, I added a double-welt pocket with zipper, following my own guidelines.

For the other side, I took a strip of fabric, and carefully placed it around my stuff.

Then I stitched through, and as such I created room for pens, ears and lip balm.

On the sides, I added a pocket for my phone, and a ribbon for my keys.

The outer pockets have the ideal size to hold my train pass. To make sure I wouldn’t lose said train pass, I added kamsnaps.

To toughen up the bottom, I cut a piece from a placemat, as explained in the book. That left me with 2/3 placemat. So I used that to make a bag organizer. I cut the remaining piece in 3 pieces, wrapped them in fabric, and sewed some extra pockets on.

Not as sturdy as I would want it to be, since the placemat is very flexible, but it does help to divide the bag up in compartments, making the whole content more organised.

It took a while before I had assembled the whole thing, mainly because I added so many extras. But I am very happy with the result!

And one more thing: while I was playing around with the bag to get the pictures right, I accidentally shot some pics from myself? A self portret from a goofy angle, I cannot not share it 🙂

Used materials

• Reddish pink denim: from the cousin bag
• Black cotton: De Stoffenkamer
• Lining: P.W. Hoofs