Two New Bags Listed On Folksy Shop

I have two new bags listed on my shop this week.  One is made from this gorgeous rose fabric with a co-ordinating stripe at the bottom and a strip of musical notes going around with buttons added for decoration.  It is fully lined and has a zipped inner pocket.

The other bag is made out of some lovely scottie dog fabric, this one has a patch pocket inside and is also fully lined.

Beach Hut Bag Listed On Shop

My friend mentioned to me the other day that she had seen a nice bag on a trip to the sea side with beach huts on it and she wished she had bought one so I thought I would find some fabric and make her one.  I found the fabric on Ebay, it is by Fryetts and is really nice for a bag.  I used some plain cream calico for the base of the bag and the handles.  The bag is lined with poly cotton and it has a patch pocket inside.  I made up three of them out of the fabric, have sold one and put one on my Folksy shop.  The other has gone away for Christmas.

I had a stall at a nice craft fair yesterday at Standard Quay, Faversham, Kent.  It is going to be an ongoing craft fair, about once a month so I am looking forward to the next one.  Not sure of the date yet but there is talk that it might be first week in November.


I sold one of the recycled newspaper clutch bags so that was a result.  I have another one that needs finishing off so I will try to get that done before the next craft fair.


I have bought some new fabrics so will be trying out some new ideas over the next few weeks.  I am just surfing the internet for inspiration.

Clutch Bag From Recycled Newspaper

I had a load of strips of newspaper left over from making my daughter's bag the other week so made them up with the help of my Grandson Leam, into some clutch bags.  I have them on my Folksy shop if anyone is interested.

Bag From Old Ties

I found a tutorial on the internet showing how to make a bag out of old ties.  My Other Half wears ties to work and was always chucking out the ones he was fed up with so I asked him to give them to me so I could use them.  Yesterday I decided to have a go at making one of the bags.  I will put a link to the original tutorial at the bottom of the page.


The first thing I noticed while making it was that some of the ties were different sizes so I had to fiddle about a bit to get the front and back to look right and end up the same size.  I also found the four I had set by for the handles were different sizes too so had to jiggle them about to get them to look symetrical, so if you decide to follow the tutorial then take this in mind before starting.


I decided to make up my own style of flap for the bag using up the smaller ends of the ties save throwing them out.  I did do a few mistakes though, I was going to line the flap but forgot to before sewing the flap into the bag so had to leave it off.  Also I was going to use magnetic clasps but forgot to put them in before making up the bag so ended up using press studs as they look better from both sides.


I have enough ties left over to make up another bag.  I think on the next one I will miss out the way the lining is done and just make a normal inner lining for the bag and then sew it in afterwards, then I can add an inside pocket to the lining before sewing it in.

This is the tutorial I partly followed http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=45985.0

Bag Made From Old Newspapers

I have had a break from sewing for the last week and decided to make another bag from folded paper.  I had some Chinese newspaper pages that were wrapped around some gifts my Other half brought back from his trip so I saved them and thought they would be good as a bag.  There was not enough to make the whole bag so I used some English newspapers as well.

This was the start when I had stuck strips of 2" selotape to the newspaper and cut along the edges so I had 2" strips.

These were then cut into 4.4" lengths which were folded up into the small bead kind of things that you connect together.  There are many good tutorials on the internet showing you how to connect these together and make them into bags.  The best thing to search for is Candy Wrapper Purse.

Once I had plenty of these little things made up I sorted them into different piles, some with more colours on and some mainly white and then put them in sets of 64.  Then I connected them up into strips of 64 and joined the ends together to make rounds like these.

When I had enough rounds to make the bottom of the bag I started sewing the rounds together using a thick needle and threading the thread through the folds at the top and bottom of the pieces.  Then I connected the two sides together at the bottom and it started to look like a bag.  This is what it looked like joined up.

I wanted to make the top of the bag and handles out of something else instead of newspaper.  I wanted something that was a block of one colour so had a look up the town and found a roll of wrapping paper in card factory for 99p.  The thickness of the paper was similar to the newspaper.

The paper is metalic in finish so would give the bag a nice shiny feel to the top.  These are the handles and the top round made up.  My Grandson Leam came round and helped me do them, I was folding and he was threading them together.

The next photo shows the top round and handles sewn onto the bag.

Now all I needed to do was add the zip closure to the top and the bag is finished.

Car Tidy

 I made this car tidy for my OH for his birthday.  I still need some more bits to go in it.