DIY shoulder bag tutorial how to pattern sew

Today we're going to be making a little shoulder bag. Very simple, beginner-friendly purse, no zippers, fancy closures, just ties. And then aside from the sewing essentials like fabric scissors, thread, and a ruler, you're just going to need fabric for your outer layer, lining, and then batting. So let's get to the pattern. For the pattern, we're going to start off with a rectangle that's going to be roughly the size of the body of the bag. My initial rectangle is 12 inches wide and 9 inches tall, just for reference, and I'll be sure to share the measurements of the final bag once it's finished. I'm a visual person, so I like to draw out the whole rectangle to kind of see roughly the size that it's going to be. But once I've got it down, I'm actually going to cut it in half and only work on patterning half of the bag to then use to cut my fabric on the fold, which will just help with the symmetry. This is the half that I'm going to work with, and now I'm just going to add on the strap. And for that, I'm going to extend this edge of the rectangle up about 10 inches. And then I'm going to turn this into a rectangle itself that is one and a half inches wide. This is the last step of the pattern. I'm going to measure one and a half inches down the center line and make a dot. I'm going to use a curve ruler for this part, but you definitely don't need one and can just as easily sketch the curve line as well. Ended up a little bit lower than my dot, but that's okay. I think I might just tweak it as I'm cutting. So this is going to be the final shape of the pattern, and you can really play around with the size. If you want a bigger bag, you can make this initial rectangle bigger. If you want a longer strap, you can make the strap longer. You could even make it wider. I will say that this is just going to be half of the final strap, as you'll see when we put the bag together. So just keep that in mind. Now that we've got the pattern cut out, it's time to cut out the fabric. As I mentioned, we're going to cut the fabric on the fold and ultimately want two of the outer layer, two of the lining, and two of the batting. For anyone curious, this is the batting that I'm using, and I just got it from Joann's. You don't have to worry about the batting being too precise, because we're just going to end up sewing it to the inside of the outer layer for some stability. We're on the home stretch for fabric cutting. Last thing are the straps, and I'm going to cut two 12 by 1 inch rectangles. Okay, I lied. I'm actually going to cut out a pocket too. This is one of the scrap pieces from one of the lining cutouts, and I'm just going to cut this curve off and turn it into a rectangle to use for a pocket. Quick recap of all the pieces that we're going to need for this project. Two cutouts of the main bag pattern in the lining fabric, two strips for the ties, one rectangle for an optional pocket, two cutouts of the main bag pattern in batting, and two cutouts of the outer layer fabric. My camera died, and we're going to film on my phone for a sec. The first thing I'm going to do is connect the outer layer fabric to the batting by sewing around the edge of this whole piece within the seam allowance. I'm using 3 eighths of an inch seam allowance throughout this whole project, so I'm probably going to connect these pieces with an eighth to a quarter of an inch seam allowance. Here's just to show how close to the edge of the fabric I sewed and what I meant by roughly cutting the batting layer. I found that it's a lot easier to sew when the batting layer is a little bit bigger than your fabric, and we can just cut off the excess now. I'm not going to quilt this one, but this would be the step to do it if you wanted to. You can just draw some lines in and quilt over the batting layer. I made a little bigger version of this bag the other day and quilted this one, so you can kind of see what that looks like. But now next step for me is facing these good sides together and sewing around the outside edge. After sewing the outside edge of the outer layer fabric, I'm going to put this piece aside and start working on the lining. First thing I'm going to do with the lining is hem what will be the top edge of my pocket. So we're just going to double fold this in and topstitch. While I was at the machine hemming the top edge of the fabric, I went ahead and overlocked the rest of the edges with a zigzag stitch to prevent them from fraying. Now I'm going to fold in the rest of the edges about a quarter of an inch toward the wrong side of the fabric and press. Now grab one of your lining pieces and you can place the pocket with the folded edges facing down and topstitch around the bottom edge of the pocket. This presser foot is actually a blind hem presser foot, but I like to use it as an edge stitching foot. The guide on it is really helpful. I ended up shortening my pocket because I realized it was a little bit too close for comfort to the top edge and the bottom given the seam allowance. And I also keep on forgetting to mention what side to sew on because my fabric doesn't really have a right and wrong side, but you're sewing the pocket onto the right side of your lining fabric. Now we can grab the other lining piece and place the two good sides together and we're going to sew around the outside edge, leaving a gap in the bottom and then continue around. This is what we've got for the lining hole in the bottom edge. And now we're going to put this aside and work on the ties. If you have a loop turner, you could just fold this in half, good sides together and sew along the edge, flip right side out. But if you don't, you can do it this way. And honestly, the method that I'm going to show right now is the one that I actually prefer. Take one short end, fold it in toward the wrong side, quarter of an inch and press. And then we're going to fold this whole thing in half the long way and press to create a crease down the middle. So now you can see the crease line throughout the center of your rectangle. And we're going to take one of these long edges and fold it in to touch that crease and press. We're going to do the same for the other edge of the fabric and fold that in to touch the center and press. Last step is to fold this in half now to encase the raw edges and press again. Just to give a look on the inside, we essentially folded this in to quarters and what you should see on the outside is the good side of your fabric. You can now just top stitch along that open edge to close it up and you've got your strap. Here's what one of mine looks like and I'm just going to go finish up the other one. Second strap is done and now we can go back to the backs. Now we're going to box the bottom corners of the bag and to do that, from this corner seam, not the corner of the fabric, but from the seam line, measure 1 inch up and 1 inch over to create a square and I'm just going to do the same thing on the other side. From here, we're going to open the bag up and press this side seam up against the bottom seam which will create this triangle. You essentially want to fold it so that the lines you drew on either side form a straight line and if I were to stick a needle from this side through the other, it would hit the line on the other side. And then from here, we're just going to sew straight across that line. Time for the box corner reveal. Looks good. Now we just have to do it to the other corner and both corners of the lining. This is something that you can also customize and play around with. Essentially, the bigger square that you make, the wider the bag is going to be. For example, let me flip this back over to compare. This is what the box corner looks like with a 1 inch box compared to this one which I used 2 inches. Got all the box corners sewed. I'm just going to trim a little bit of this excess fabric off. Now we're going to flip the lining right side out and place it inside the outer layer. I'm going to eventually pin everything down but first, place the ties. So I'm going to find the midpoint of this curve. Just mark that with a pen on both sides. We're going to grab our tie and sandwich it in between the outer layer and the lining so that the end that still has the raw edge is pinned up here at the top of the bag. I'm going to flip it over and do the same thing on the other side. Take the end that still has the raw edge, pin it to the top edge of the bag. Now that we have the ties placed, I'm going to go ahead and pin the lining to the outer layer all around both sides. So this side and then I'm going to flip it over and pin on this side. All the pins are in. On one side, we're going to sew down and around this entire opening. Flip it over. We're going to do the same on the other side except we're going to start about 2.5 inches in from the top of the strap and then also end 2.5 inches in from the top of the other strap. So we're going to start a little bit lower down here on this side, sew around, and then stop a little bit lower on the opposite side. One side you'll have sewn all the way to the top of the strap and then the other side you'll stop about 2.5 inches down. Before I'm flipping it right side out, I'm just going to make some notches in the curve. Be very careful not to clip the seam. Definitely keep in mind how wide your straps are because the skinnier they are, the harder it'll be to flip right side out, but I managed. Now I'm just going to give the bag a press. Now we're going to open up the top of the straps and place the linings good sides together and the outer layer good sides together and then sew across. Once the straps are sewed together, I'm just going to trim off some of the seam allowance to reduce the bulk. And now we can just fold under the seam allowance on this open edge and topstitch around the hole opening on both sides, which will close the gap up top in the handle. Got the gap in the handle closed and now the last step is to close up the hole in the lining. You can do this at your machine, but I'm going to handstitch for a more invisible seam. Whenever I'm done hand sewing and after I've tied it off, I like to feed the needle up through the seam and poke it up somewhere in the middle to pull the string through and get it a little taut to cut and that way the string is somewhere up in the middle of your project rather than hanging out. I also wanted to add that the final dimensions of my bag ended up around 9 inches wide, 6 inches tall, and 2 inches deep.