Simple Tote

Another Christmas has come and gone...Hope y'all had a Christmas full of peace and happiness.  This year, I tried as much as I could to make gifts for everyone.  However, precious time was very limited but I did get a chance to make a few handmade gifts.  While there are very expensive gifts to purchase and give, I hope my children realize it is the thought of the gift that is much more important than what department store you purchased the gift from and how much it costs.

The Simply Style Tote was a quick and easy tote to put jogether in time for Christmas:

I'll show you more later......  Can you guess what else I made for Xmas gifts?  Stay tuned!

Simply Style Tote Round 2

Remember my Simply Stylish Tote I made some time ago.  Well, a good friend of mine admired it greatly and actually place my first ever order.  She had a few specific requests so it took some time to shop for that perfect handle and fabric color. 

This was my first time working with store-bought handles.  It was quite a challenge considering my handle tabs were cut a little too short and I just got too lazy to cut longer ones and was determined to make this happen! 

Finally, a few months later, it's done!  I'm calling her my Rita Bag made with cotton canvas, faux suede and natural fiber handles.

Thank you Rita for your order.  I hope you enjoy the bag as much as I enjoyed making it just for you!  You think she'll like it?

SIMPLY STYLISH TOTE

Back to sewing!  Found some really cute fabric at Kilauea Kreations, a cute little quilt shop on the east side of the island.  I really like orange and thought what a cute tote it would make.  So, here I go....dug up a cute pattern from this website.  For this tote, I extened the width 2" making it 15 inches wide instead of 13 inches.  I used a pretty Robert Kaufman fabric for the lining I got from a local fabric store:

Used some D-rings that were on sale at Wal*Mart::

I like using this Bb & me tag....makes it look "special".  I made a little yoyo from some scrap fabric and sewed a cute little button in the middle:

Here she is....SIMPLY STYISH TOTE:

From this project, I learned that using interfacing on the back of the exterior fabric makes a difference, to me.  It was advised that if  fusible fleece is used on the back of the lining, it isn't necessary to use any interfacing on the exterior fabric.  While to some it does not matter, I personally like the feel and crisp look of a bag that uses interfacings both on the lining AND exterior fabric.  I also used magnetic snaps on this tote.  So cute!