Simple tote

Wow, it is really gift-giving season around here. This weekend we were downstate again, this time for a five-year-old neice's birthday party.

I decided to sew up this little tote bag to hold the copy of The Lorax (on recycled paper! how nice!) that we got for her.



It is based on the Simple Tote from Amy Karol's Bend-the-Rules Sewing (errata here), but I resized it to fit the book and made the handles the same length. I should have made it even a little bigger, but the book just fits. I also added a little linen patch on the front on which I embroidered our neice's name (uh, yeah, I blurred that because I'm not sure how her parents feel about having her name on this here little blog, sorry).



I feel like the flannel used as facing between the outer fabric and the lining fabric makes the bag a little thick and bulky, especially since it is so small. But I'm not really sure how to fix that, since I think the quilting cottons I used for the outer fabric and lining fabric would be too thin and wispy on their own. Maybe just using some heavier fabric and omitting the flannel facing would work a bit better.

I bought the fruit fabric maybe a year ago at JoAnn's with no project in mind. I figured it was too cute (and on sale) to pass up, and I'd find a use for it sooner or later. All the rest of the materials came from my little stash, too. Except the embroidery floss. That came from the stash of old craft/sewing goods at my parents' house.