Denim B-Bag

Recently, I wanted to make a personalized gift for a friend, and not being sure of the correct clothing size for her, I decided to make her a denim bag with her first name initial on it: B

I made the bag using this denim dress and this little pink outfit that I don't think anyone was ever going to wear again!


I used the bottom part of the dress to make the bag (from where the pockets start). I used the front-bottom, folded in half, for the outside of the bag, and the back-bottom (also folded in half, of course) for the inside lining. Bizarrely, this left me with a bag that had pockets on the outside but not the inside, but I wanted the pockets to be a feature. However, because I used denim to line the inside, the bag actually turns out to be reversible.

Inspired by the reverse applique in Zom's introductory post, I cut a piece of the pink fabric and placed it on the wrong side of the denim. I then drew a "B" in chalk where I wanted it to be on the outside and sewed this in (I sewed in two lines of stitching for extra security).



I then cut away the denim from the right side with a stanley knife, in a rough manner but as carefully as possible not to cut the fabric underneath.


Once the "B" was done, I could sew in the lining. I turned the lining bag inside out, placed it inside the outer bag, and sewed them together where they both shared a seam at the top.



After sewing the bags together, I folded the top inch of denim in on itself from both sides (inside and outside) and pinned together, waiting for the strap to be placed in before finally sewing together.

Then to make the strap....

I used the elastic portion of the top and a piece of denim cut away from the dress.

This strap took me far, far longer than it should have, because, as you can probably see in the picture, I sewed the strap far too narrowly to be able to turn it back "the right way around" from inside-out easily. Especially when there were seams sewn into the piece of denim I used! I should have just done it another way, so there is a lesson for me....

And in case by now you've forgotten what the bag looked like, here it is again :)