Ruffled Bag

I went on a fabric craze a couple of weeks ago with my sister. We hit the sale section at Jo-Ann's and bought a ton of fabric. I just bought 1/2 yard of each. I had no idea what I was going to do with them but the colors made me happy. :)

A couple of days later I went to Wal-Mart in Brea (one of the few that carry fabric) and bought even more fabric. The lady asked me if I was a quilter. "No, just a crazy lady that loves the possibilities of all these fabrics." Although, I would LOVE to learn how to quilt.

Browsing through the blogs I follow, I hit upon some inspiration. I've seen a couple of ruffled bags and wondered if I could make one.

Here is the combination I chose.

And here is the (almost) finished product. Please ignore my dirty cabinets. That's my soon to be next project...

I bought a 3 pack of canvas totes at Michael's. I figured it would save me the few steps of making my own purse. I decided on the placement of fabric and set about measuring. I didn't think it would be easy to sew anywhere on this bag but at the top so the bottom fabric actually reached up to the top. Each succeeding piece was just a little shorter.

Then, I hemmed each piece at the bottom and made my gathering stitches at the top. After each piece was gathered, I fit them to the bag. Once that was done, I sewed the bottom two pieces together, then the top two pieces. In the end, I sewed all four pieces together. I did this so that in pinning all the pieces together, my gathering stitches wouldn't let out. I'm no expert seamstress,

so this made sense in my head. lol

Before I stitched the ruffles to the canvas bag, I needed to add a border to hide all the gathered mess on top. I used a bandana that I bought at Wal-Mart for a dollar. Once that was done, I attached it all to the canvas bag. I still need to add something to the top...maybe a fabric flower or one of these leather flowers found at http://funkypolkadotgiraffe.blogspot.com/2011/08/funky-friday-feature-gunny-sack.html

All in all, it cost me less than $10.00! Woo Hoo!