Time Warp Sunburst tote

If you recall this post from October 1st, you've probably been holding your breath waiting to see what I was going to make! Or, you've more likely forgotten all about it by now. Ha!

Well, here it is, all finished and modeled (for size comparison) by my favorite little model in all the world:

Obviously, it's a tote bag. It's made from "Sunburst" fabric, which is one of the designs in Jessica Jones's brand-new-not-even-out-yet Time Warp collection which she designed for Cloud9 Fabrics. The fabrics will be released for sale in November January (due to a damaged first shipment). Here are some more of the Time Warp designs:

They are printed on barkcloth, which I had never heard of before, but I found it to be very lovely fabric and easy to work with. I love it! It's heavier than a quilting cotton, but not quite as heavy as canvas, and it has a texture to it, which you can see above. Photos just never do it justice, though. It's so much prettier in person!

I didn't use a pattern for this tote. Jess and I decided what it should look like, and I figured out how to make it work. It's just a basic tote with a flat boxed bottom, so it was pretty simple to make. I just had to make sure I had all my calculations correct. It has a firm interfacing and stands up nicely on its own.

I did, however, use the instructions from Erin Erickson's Two Zip Hipster pattern for the recessed zipper, because I'd used it before a couple of times and knew it worked well.

The inside has a slip pocket on each side, one with a pen slot. The lining is a dark brown canvas, which makes it kind of hard for you to see, but the strip of Sunburst fabric at the top of each pocket helps.

The bottom of the tote is made from a dark brown faux leather, a.k.a. "pleather" (=plastic leather). It was my first time sewing with it, and I found it to be a piece of cake! I'd read all kinds of tips, etc., in preparation... like using a Teflon sewing machine foot, a leather needle, etc. This pleather was so lovely to sew on that none of that was really necessary. I found that my regular machine foot worked just fine, as did a regular size 14 needle.

I made the zipper tab from a scrap of the pleather...

... as well as the zipper pull. Fun little details.

A more complicated making, though, was the straps. It took a long time to decide how best to make them. I ended up using a tutorial from Emmaline Bags. I had to use a little math, too, to figure out how to splice them and not have the splice show, since the pleather wasn't long enough to cut the whole length needed. The tutorial was great, and I'm pretty pleased with how the straps turned out. (They're really not as dark as they appear in this photo.) I did use the leather needle when sewing these, just to make sure I wouldn't have any trouble sewing through the multiple layers. It went very smoothly.

My only real struggle of the whole project was setting the rivets. I think the problem was that the rivets we'd gotten were just too long, and pounding them enough to get them tight made them go crooked. Or something. But, I did manage to get them in decently finally. (And I learned that you CAN remove rivets if you have to! Not easy, but do-able.)

All in all, I very pleased with how the bag turned out. Jess will be taking it with her to the International Quilt Market in Houston, TX, the end of this month, so she can carry it around and tell everybody "Look at my new fabric!" Ha.

Our little photo shoot was fun on Monday afternoon. We even had inspectors, one whose colors went very nicely with the bag.

Here's the second inspector. She didn't match as well, and she was a bit more shy so she inspected from a distance. Shy but beautiful.

I do love my little model! She's the greatest! And works cheap. :)

She really got into the modeling thing. Here are some more of her fun poses. If you're in the market to hire her professionally (or just want to see), you can click on the image below for a better look at her poses. :)