Sew She Can Basket Tote Bag

We hope you heard that we’ll be participating in Lori Holt’s newest sew along starting this August called Bee Happy! Since we’ll be participating in this sew along that means we’ll be headed to the shop owner’s retreat at the end of June to get all the details and supplies. And since this is my first sewing retreat I thought, you know what I need for my first ever sewing retreat? A cute bag to carry around all my sewing stuff in the for the week. So that’s what I’m doing.

I saw this Basket Tote from She Can Sew and loved it so much and thought it would make the perfect project bag for me.

Here are all my pieces cut out. I’m using this gorgeous pink floral from Folk Song by Anna Maria Horner for Free Spirit as my main print, a bunch of Riley Blake confetti cotton solids for the outer pieces and the lining, as well as a Riley Blake pink stripe for the interior. I finished it off with that aqua from Studio E for my handles and binding.

I didn’t take a picture before I made my handles but I used her suggestion of using this page for the handles and it came out perfect. I was so worried that they would end up different sizes because that always happens to me and then I’d have a funny bag but this tutorial was so great and made 2 perfect bag handles!

Assembly was much harder than it needed to be until I borrowed my mom’s zipper foot. I didn’t have one for my machine and thought I could make do, but I could not and was not liking my bag very much. Then I used her zipper foot and it was like night and day and was not hard at all. So don’t ignore that instruction!

It’s not a perfect bag, and if I had been making it for someone else then I would have worked a littler harder to hide my seams, but it was for me so I didn’t and I still love how it turned out!

I still think this will be perfect for the Riley Blake and Lori Holt retreat in just 2 weeks. Look for me to post updates from there and come see the new sew along from Lori hitting both stores in August!

By: Vicki