The Flowery Applique Camel Toe Fantastically Cool Tote Bag Pattern World s Best Ever Instructions For Your New Favourite Tote Bag, We Promise By the Sew Sorry, Sew Fat Collective 1 P age
Hello! We at Sew Sorry, Sew Fat are Sew Excited! To share with you our first ever super duper sewing pattern for total beginners! You may have had tote bags before, but we promise you, you have never had a tote bag like this one! This is the world s best ever tote bag pattern, and we have decided to share it with you for the low low price of $23 out of the kindness of our hearts. Of course, you ve already paid your $23 or you wouldn t be reading this, so let s get on with the omgsqueee excitement of putting this bag together! Our sewing inspiration, ladies! Only years of specialized training and practice plus a stroke of God-given talent, as well as the most up-to-date sewing technology, allows any of us to produce sewn goods at all. 2 P age
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Preparation You have waited your whole life for the perfect Tote Bag pattern, so let s not rush those all-important preparation steps, ok? 1. Spend 30 hours on the internet dream-shopping the best-ever tote bag fabric For a list of fabric suppliers, consult the appendix. Right now, just let your imagination go wild. Leather! Suede! Silk! Velvet! Designer fabric! Chain mail! Tote bags made out of pieces of vintage prom dresses! When you ve had your fill of looking at all of these fabulous fabric options, we recommend some nice quilting cotton or canvas. You can find chevron designer quilting cotton and canvas at a variety of online retailers for the reasonable price of $25/yard. Isn t it fantastic, to save all this money on making your own stuff? 2. Wash and dry your chosen fabric Use the hottest water settings on your washing machine and the highest temp settings on your dryer available. 3. Buy an iron I know that you already have an iron for your clothes, but there is a secret in the world of real professional sewists: some irons are only good for pressing fabric after it has been assembled into a piece of clothing. 4 P age
For sewing, you need a pre-finished garment iron. May we recommend a Rowenta? This intimidatingly fancy-pants piece of high-tech fabric-flattening glory will totally make every seam you ever sew look like it has descended from the haute couture heavenly ateliers of Paris, if in fact you ever use it. But the main thing really is to take it out of the box and have it visible in your sewing space so people will take you seriously as a sewist. Using it is totally optional. 4. Buy thread. And a pencil. And a tailor s ham, ironing board, seam press, quilting ruler of at least 18, French curve, tailor s chalk, highquality glass-head silk pins, a disappearing fabric marker, a variety of sewing machine and hand-sewing needles, seam stabilizer, nofray, cutting mat, dressmaker s carbon, basting thread, and what the hell, since you re already out, toilet paper and a gallon of milk. No seamripper though; that s for pussies who don t follow our infallible directions to the letter. 5. Download and print out your Flowery Applique Camel Toe Fantastically Super Cool Tote Bag Pattern. There are 30 pages in our pattern, and let me tell you, ladies: they are the result of minutes worth of hard labour. But it is a work of true passion and love. And therefore you should overlook any errors you may encounter. Tape them together in order, according to the page numbers on the bottom. It doesn t really matter how you tape them together, as long as the end result is a vaguely rectangular shape. 5 P age
Take a selfie with your assembled pattern and post it to Instagram with our super cool hashtag, #OMGimsewingwithSSSF! 1: Dog Optional 6 P age
6. Trace out a rectangle on your assembled pattern pages. Using your ruler, pencil, and plenty of wine, trace out a rectangle of 18 by 22. This is your pattern piece. 7. Cut out the rectangle with a pair of paper scissors. 8. Crap. We forgot to tell you to buy scissors. Make sure you have some paper scissors, fabric scissors (Ginghers, of course), and little thread snips. Great. Let s keep going. 7 P age
2: The paper scissors are on the bottom 9. Now use the paper scissors to cut out your rectangle. Assembly 10. Fold your fabric in half and align the selvedges. The selvedges are the edges of your fabric that are not fraying because no one has cut them. Ideally they will match up perfectly. But if it s a little crooked, don t worry about it too much. Who will notice? 11. Put the rectangle on top of the fabric, aligning the grain line with the selvedges. Oops, we should have told you to draw a grain line on your pattern piece. Go ahead and do that now. It should be roughly parallel to the long edge of the rectangle. 8 P age
3: Have fun and personalize your pattern by using different colours of sharpie markers! Now put your pattern piece on the folded fabric with that grain line parallel to the selvedges, if they re even. If not, don t sweat it. Grain is not God, no matter what all the sewing teachers preach. 12. Pin the pattern piece to the fabric. Try not to let it move around too much. 9 P age
4; This is a pin. 13. Use the fabric scissors (Ginghers, natch) to cut out the rectangles from the fabric. 14. Decide which is the fabric s right side and wrong side. The right side will be darker, brighter, more textured, or somehow different from the wrong side. It doesn t matter so much if you get it right or not, as long as you make the same decision with both pieces. Now mark the wrong sides of the fabric, with the disappearing fabric pen. A giant X that may or may not come out of your fabric will do the trick. 10 P age
15. Decide which way is up on your fabric, and make sure both pieces are pointing in the same direction. Mark the top with the disappearing fabric pen. Or not, if you like the upside down look on directional fabric. 16. Fold over 1 of the side you have decided is the top, towards the wrong side. If the disappearing marker has disappeared, just mark it again. If you want something permanent, though, you can totally thread-trace it with your basting thread. That means making some basting stitches, which is basically a very long running stitch, which is when you just go up and down and up and down with a hand needle in a single direction and it makes kind of a dashy line. 17. Press the seam. Then fold it over and press it again. The piece is now 2 shorter. That s what you want. 11 P age
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18. Sew the seam down. 19. Oh, crap. No, not yet. Thread your sewing machine first. You may need to wind the bobbin. Make sure your sewing machine has a sewing needle inserted, that it is plugged in, and that you have a chair to sit on. The chair is important. Never try to sew standing up! 5: A correctly threaded sewing machine. Plesae refer to your manual for instructions. 13 P age
6: A sewing machine that has been safely and correctly plugged in. Please call an electrician for instructions. 14 P age
7: A chair. 20. Now sew the seam down, at ¾ from the top folded edge. If you are having a hard time making that line straight, that s ok! Those seamline markers on sewing machines can be hard to see! If that s you, here are some sewing machine feet that may help you sew a straight line that you can buy for $50 or less! 15 P age
8: Contrasting topstitching thread makes it extra cute. 21. We are going to do FRENCH SEAMS, people! We can t call this the Fantastically Super Cool Tote Bag Pattern if it has regular old fraying edges on the inside, amirite? So, French seams it is! Start by putting your pieces together, with the top edges aligned, and the side edges aligned, wrong sides together. Now sew it together around the sides and the bottom. Use a 3/8 seam. Don t sew the top shut! 16 P age
9: Wait... isn't this backwards? 22. Turn it inside out. And press the sides and the bottom. 23. Oh, you sewed the top together and can t turn it out? Use a seamripper to unpick those stitches. Wait, we told you not to buy a seamripper. Go buy one now. 24. Sew it together again This time using a ½ seam, again, just the sides and the bottom. Don t sew the top! 17 P age
10: Yeah, that's better. 25. Turn it right side out again. And press the seams again. 18 P age
11: We'll call that bit of excess fabric a 'design detail' 26. Put something inside it, and grab it around the top to make an attractively gathered finish. You re done! 19 P age
We can t wait to see your finished Flowery Applique Camel Toe Fantastically Super Cool Tote Bags all sewn up! Remember to share them with us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with the hashtag #icantbelieveimadethismyself! 20 P age
Appendix 1 Online Fabric Stores 21 P age
Online Fabric Stores: Moodfabrics.com 22 P age