Seasonal transitions-suit satchel

Hi It's Róisín, this is my first refashion :P yay! It's early Autumn here in Scotland and the school term has started. The huge gap in my Autumn "wardrobe" was a nice but practical bag for school. This year has seen the return of the satchel, but being a vegetarian, I don't wear leather, so finding a hard wearing but good looking bag is difficult so I thought, why not make one? And what is more hard wearing than a wool suit? So I scooted up to Glasgow and found an xxl blue pinstripe suit in oxfam. Unfortunately I have no before photos but this is (ROUGHLY) what the original suit looked like.

I made up measurements by roughly following a design I created by measuring my largest textbook, and piling all my stuff up to get the depth. very technical stuff :P

This is what the finished bag looks like. I lined and piped it using some funky remnant material and curtain cord. Overall it turned out ok :) It has pleated pockets on the front, pockets on either side and pockets on the inside lining. I made those using the original inside pockets from the suit and some homemade bias binding. The"D rings" are belt buckles. I was at my Gran's whilst making it and she kept saying how good the quality of the suit was and asking my uncle what size he took :P Oh well, it makes quite a nice bag now!