Shoreline Shoulder Bag - BOTMC

Have you heard of the Bag of the Month Club? It's a 3-month subscription where you pay one fee and get a new only-available-to-club-members pattern each of those months. The patterns remain a secret until the month they are released, so you don't know what you're getting when you subscribe, but they are designed by some of the best bag designers out there, so you can be sure you're getting great patterns and at a reduced price compared to buying them individually. You can subscribe anytime during the three months, so if you want to wait until you've seen all three patterns, you can do so and still get a good deal. A few months after that three-month period is up, each pattern will be released for sale individually, but the cost will be increased to regular pattern prices.

October is the second month of the current subscription, and the designer happens to be my favorite, Erin Erickson Gilbey from Dog Under My Desk. Have you heard me mention her before? ;) I was fortunate to be able to test her pattern (as I have many previously), and now I can finally show it to you! It's called the Shoreline Shoulder Bag. Here's my tester version.

The "birds" fabric is one of Jess's (a.k.a. How About Orange) Holding Pattern barkcloth designs for Cloud9 Fabrics. The solid navy is a canvas.

The front of the bag has a zippered pocket with a slip pocket behind it. The back side has just the contrast fabric with no pockets.

It's a good sized bag, as you can tell compared to the chair (sorry, there was no photographer available to get a shot of me wearing it). It's also wide at the bottom, so it holds a LOT of stuff!

The pleats help it to expand and hold even more!

The inside (on which I used a brushed denim lining) has the same pockets as the outside, installed the same way. Very easy to do.

Since my fabrics were rather heavy, I used a quilter's weight solid lining for the pockets to keep from getting too much bulk in the seams.

Erin has a unique way of attaching her straps, which she's used on a couple of her other patterns. I love how they turn out!

This pattern was great for fussy cutting the fabric for the front. It was pretty easy to do.See how that looks almost like it's a solid piece of fabric above the zipper?

One more photo, just because I love it and couldn't not use it. :)

So that's the October Bag of the Month Club pattern. I have to say, Erin's done it again, with another terrific pattern! It's extremely well-written, with lots of attention to detail and many photos to demonstrate the instructions. It's also been thoroughly tested, and you can see more of the testers' bags on Erin's blog post here. You can never go wrong with a Dog Under My Desk pattern!

September's pattern has been available through the club for a month, and you can still get it if you subscribe before the end of November... or wait until the subscription is over after November and buy it individually. You can check out the details here.