Please look after this bag.....

The local Scout group has a jumble sale twice a year and so we had the first one for this year on Saturday.  I help out sorting the stuff coming in, selling women's clothes, bedding, curtains etc and anything left which is still saleable is taken to a local Cancer Charity shop - our Ladies-that-do- exclusive boutique!

So sorting through the bedding I found a lonely Paddington Bear pillow case.  There was no quilt cover and there was just the one.  I told one of the other ladies that if it was still there at the end of the sale, I would buy it and take it for my 'stash'.  Anyway, the jumble sale was busy and lots of stuff was sold but unfortunately no one wanted the pillowcase.  I divid up my 25p and took the cover home, washed it with some other bits I had found and then added it to the growing pile of fabric (yet again) under my desk.

I had finished my Tigger Tote (see previous post) and was feeling motivated to keep going so took out the pillowcase and studied it.  The picture is pretty big on the cover and to make a 'normal' 18"x18!" tote, I would lose a lot of the picture background.  I didn't want to lose a lot of that as it made a great scene.  I looked at my collection of shoppers and came up with a plan.

Invariably on a 'Ladies that do' Friday, I am asked for toilet rolls by either family or the guys at the garage.  This means that I have to collect a pack of 18 toilet rolls to carry some distance from the shop to the car.  More often than not, this was a pain as the plastic handle on the pack or even the packaging itself split before I had got back to the car resulting in my swear box being filled when I get in!!!  So I had made myself a bag which would take a full pack of 18 rolls.  This solved the problem of the handle breaking and/or the packaging splitting.  It also covered up the fact that, yes, I was buying another packet of loo rolls!! lol

This particular bag is great but the handles are a little small to put on my shoulder, but long so I have to wrap them around my fingers.  Not really a big problem as the rolls don't weigh very heavy, but when I am shopping 'normally' I prefer to use a shoulder bag for heavier shopping.  I needed to make sure that the handles on my pillowcase bag would enable me to carry the bag on my shoulders.

I measured the straps from my 'shower curtain, fold up' bag as the length of those is perfect and cut the straps for this bag to the same size.  I used a contrast colour fabric for the straps and to deepen the bag (to take the full packet of rolls) and to reflect the colour of the straps, I added a 4" bottom panel. This made the bag a good 21"x21" with a fair piece of the full Paddington scene on both the front and the back.

All the pieces were cut and a lining cut from an old cot sheet.  This is a great weight of cotton and I needed a white lining due to the white background on the pillow case.  The pieces were pinned together and when sewn, all the seams pressed flat.

The bag was made using a basic tote pattern - these are 10 a 1p on Pinterest and Allfreesewing where I look for inspiration - so I will not go into details.  Suffice to say, again everything went swimmingly!

I now have two great new bags from an old sweatshirt (Tigger bag) and a jumbo shopper made from a pillowcase for 25p plus 50p for the cot blanket.  Role on Friday so they can go on their maiden trip!

:)