The Great Getaway Bag

In my Stitching Santa parcel this year I received a length of Ikea home fabric, it’s a lovely heavy weight print and I immediately thought of a bag pattern in Lisa Lam’s Bag-Making Bible. It’s a roomy holdall, with a large pocket at the front called The Great Getaway Bag. I decided to really go with the colours and I ordered a pink chunky zip and a set of blue leather handles. I was planning to use green bias binding for piping round the edge but in the end caution got the better of me, I felt adding piping would be two extra layers of fabric too far!

Good bag patterns always seem to take forever to cut out, there are so many pieces, linings, interlinings, interfacings…I counted up at the end and there are over 50 pieces to make this bag!!!!! All the outer fabric pieces were interfaced with a heavy weight vilene. I used a cute rabbit print to line it, it’s from my stash as it was left over from backing a quilt, it’s slightly heavier than quilting cotton. The lining pieces were all interlined with batting, the instructions called for iron-on fleece but here in the UK it’s pretty expensive so I’ve started using batting and spray adhesive!

There’s lots more info on making the bag and photos of The Great Getaway Bag on my blog at the Crafty Creek, please come over and have a look.

It’s a great bag, roomy, but not too big. I love the blue handles and the pink chunky zip! I think it will be ideal for taking my stuff to Embroiderers Guild…and perfect for stash building trips such as  next months Yorkshire Spoolettes meet up in Dewsbury 🙂