Week 8 of 52

I’m so excited to share this week’s make with you. It’s not clothes!

Inspired by a fellow instagrammer, I made a duffle bag out of items around the house.

An old shower curtain, some leftover scraps of material and the hardware from an old purse created this . . .

She used a free online tutorial but she had to size up hers and I wasn’t up for doing the math so I bought a pattern. This is view A from Simplicity 8710.

The aqua colored fabric is my scraps from this flop.

The striped fabric is from a very old shower curtain that was destined for either the donation center or the landfill.

I’ve never made anything like this before so I was intimidated at first. It was freeing to know that if it was a flop no money was wasted since everything was free. The zipper was thrifted by my mom and gifted to me so even that was free.

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I was pretty skeptical of the back of the bag and the portion that was supposed to fit over the handle of a suitcase, but I love it!

It’s perfect and a must have on any bag like this. I can’t wait to try it out on my next airplane ride.

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I can’t get over how cute it turned out and how well the fabrics look together.

I still need to go buy and install the snaps on the side straps, but I’ll wait to go out to the store until I need a few more things. That’s life in a pandemic, I usually try to go out when I need a few things not just one.

This pattern did have a mistake. It tells you to put the wrong side of the zipper to the right side of the fabric to begin the zipper install. That is wrong. It should be right sides together. I don’t usually install that type of zipper so I was massively confused. I had to call my mom and check in with her. She is a much more advanced and seasoned seamstress. She installs zippers all the time so she walked me through it and helped me determine that the pattern instructions were indeed wrong.

As far as I can tell, that’s the only mistake. I like the pattern and am planning on making another bag for my oldest son. He loves mine and I’ll make him one soon. I didn’t do the foam that the pattern called for in mine. I had none on hand and didn’t want to spend money on this project. I’m going to grab some for my son’s version so that I can try that out. I’ll make sure to share his once I’ve completed it.

That’s it for this week. I cut out four other project yesterday so there are a lot possibilities for week nine!

Happy sewing, friends!