Today I turned an underused skirt into a bag. This skirt was one of the first pieces of clothing that my boyfriend bought for me, so… sorry to him. LOL.
Before: Skirt. True to the blog post title, this skirt looks like a patchwork job made of small pieces (scraps) of the same army fatigue corduroy fabric
After: Bag!
Back to sewing…
This is actually the item that gave me the idea to relearn using the sewing machine (actually, no. I wanted to put pockets on my skirts but this bag was the final straw, I guess). My mom got this canvas bag from an event (PinoyME, “ME” as in Micro Enterprise) a few months ago. We discovered the Lapu Lapu flour print on the inside which we absolutely loved, but the handles leave much to be desired. I turned it inside out, removed the wooden handles (I’ll force my mom to make a scroll wall hanging out of it someday), put in a lining fabric, and new handles out of the lining fabric and some leftover canvas cloth from a school project. Voila! New, awesome, usable bag!
Before (well, before sewing but after turning it inside-out):
For one of my classes this sem, we had to compile our plates so far and place them in a bag. Since I couldn’t find a satisfactory canvas bag that could fit 15×20 boards, I resorted to getting the proper 15×20 bag made for this exact purpose. It looks like this:
Sorry to say, I found the lettering at the lower right ugly. It took me a week to think of how to cover it up, and I decided on painting over it. I was inspired by this particular image I found on Design*Sponge (which was also part of the inspiration for my plates the bag was supposed to contain)
… was to make a new handle for this bag!
My mom and I have been collecting aluminum can pull tabs to make a new handle because the strap the bag came with was, to put it bluntly, ugly.
Here’s a photo I took a few months back. The black cord is the original strap. It looked… un-classy. At that time I was experimenting on how to thread the pull tabs properly, but in the end I went to a mall and took a good look at the available bracelets in the same style.
This is the bag that I posted in my 365 blog, which I decided to hide from my mom until I give it to her on Mothers’ Day (made with love, of course). You can find more finished photos and the link to the fabric flower tutorial there, but here’s the work-in-progress pics so you’ll see how I made the padding on the handles. The original handles were made of braided natural fibers of some sort and they’re rough and itchy if used as a shoulder bag, that’s why my mom wanted it to have some sort of padding on the handles in the first place. Of course, when my mom wants something like this done, she makes me do it for her. I forgot to take a BEFORE picture, but it didn’t really change much besides the yellow padding on the handles, so… yeah.
Materials (it’s practically free because I have all this stuff already):
– Thin rubber foam, about 2mm thick (the stuffing inside bags my mom bought in Bangkok. I told you I keep everything) but any padding would do, even fiberfill or cotton or extra layers of fabric.
– Yellow fabric to match the original bag color (free sample swatch from a fabric supplier)
– Yellow thread (leftover DMC embroidery thread from ages ago)
– Super glue, needle, and clips to fasten stuff with
ang craftista 