Bias Tape Bag Make Over

After making the birthday present bag and it going down a treat posted here I thought I'd make one for myself, this time adding a zip as I thought I'd be adventurous!  I'd treated myself to some fat quarters in Amy Butler fabric, if you haven't seen her patterns please look her up as they're so bright and cheery they gladden my heart, and thought I'd make myself a bag from one of them.  I made the Prudent Baby pattern larger and added an extra pleat and inserted a 20cm zipper to the lining before sewing the lining and outer together.  If you look closely the zipper isn't quite centre but I'm happy with it as it's only the third zipper I've ever put in anything!

I'm just really glad my charity shop find sewing machine, that my mother-in-law found for £5 came with all the different feet to do fun and essential stuff!  I've still not tried the embroidery one or the leather one as I'm too skint to splash out on leather!  I also like to hand embroider as I've been learning from the lovely Sublime Stitching.

Anyhoo...I digress, here's a picture of my lovely bag to which I added a few brooches and made a little flower out of the left over bias tape and put a few sequins with it too as everything should have a bit of sparkle, I am a magpie you know!

Fizz wanted in on the action, thankfully I got the pictures before she tried to curl up on the bag

Here's the zipper open, I didn't have a yellow zip but like the bright colours together so don't mind

Then because I thought that wasn't adventurous enough and because I'd found a large scrap of what I can only describe as 'stiffner' as I don't know the proper name, I decided to make a flat bottomed bag with this stuff in to keep the shape.  It's like hessian but a few layers glued together so it's sturdy, answers on a post card please!  The only thing was because I was concentrating so much on getting the bottom right, and it's a little wonky, I completely forgot to put a zip in! D'oh!  It's ok though as I've got to make another four as they're all Christmas presents and shall post about them in more detail on the crafty Christmas club blog so maybe I'll get it all right by the fifth one!

As you can tell Fizz is an attention seeker

Here's the flat bottom of the bag