Another Tote

I have been making lots of totes bags lately.  I guess I have alot of stuff to carry these days, LOL.  Here is a tote I made to take to Austin a few weeks ago.

It is hard to tell in this picture, but the bag is quite large.  I used Hometown fabric by Sweetwater from Moda.  I love this fabric!  The funny thing is, I actually bought this fabric months ago (Thanksgiving weekend) in a scrap bundle by accident when I meant to buy another collection by Sweetwater.

After I got home and unrolled the jelly roll, I realized I had the wrong collection.  Oh well, I wasn't even familiar with this collection but I loved it because of all the cities and family oriented words.  Nonetheless, I set it aside to work on something else and spent the next few weeks looking for yardage

When I started to make this bag, I started with a pattern but frankly in the end I drifted far away from the original look.  The original bag had charm squares at the bottom, a band across the center and solid at the top.  I obviously did solid at the bottom and vertical strip piecing at the top.  When you look at the verticle pieces, you'll notice the widths are random, that is because I used the strip as it came in the bundle. 

I only had one strip of the city print so I placed it front and center on the bag it was my favorite out of the bundle.

 

Finding fabric for the lining was difficult because I could not get the reds, greys or creams to match.  In the end, I found this newsprint looking print from Mama Said Sew (which was the original collection I was after) at my LQS.  The MSS print matched beauitifully.  I made a pocket for the inside of the bag using some strips and included the selvages.  I love how the pocket, which no one can see turned out. 

The tote measures 22 inches tall and 18 inches wide.  It's real sturdy because I used fusible fleece on both the lining and the body of the bag.  Thanks for stopping by and I hope you are having a great week.