99¢ Striped Bow Canvas Grocery/Beach/ Toy Bag Tutorial!

My first official tutorial 100% by me! Hope you enjoy- Please post any comments about how my directions were, if I explained well and made the project seem easy, and how your bags turned out! I was  out at the good ole 99¢ Store with my mama and LOVED this canvas striped kitchen towel when I saw it! I had no Idea what I was going to do with it but I made sure to pick up two (later went back to get the 3rd that I needed to finish)  and see what I was inspired to do. Here was the result:

 

Materials:

1. Three 99¢ Store (or any other canvas or canvas-like)  striped dish-towels

(at my local store they came in this blue color and a red color)

2. 1.5 yards of strap fabric 

(I got a tan 1.5" cotton woven from the "by the yard" trim section at Joann's)

1. Cut 2 of the towels in half width wise- creating 4 seperate equal pieces

2.  Cut two of those 4 pieces 6" from each side. Save one of the center pieces for your bow and discard the other. The 4 large outer pieces created will be the sides of your bag and your bow.

 3. Cut a 6" long piece along the width from your 3rd towel, creating the piece for the bottom of your bag.

4.  To create the bow,  first cut the finished towel edge off of two of the pieces. Then sew them together  on all four sides with a 1/4" seam leaving a 2-3 in opening on a side of your choice that you will use to turn the bow right side out. All of your pieces for the project should look like this: 

5. turn your bow right side out and press. fold the opening under 1/4" and topstich it shut.

 

 

 

6. Find the center of the bow and pinch together, put under the presser foot and CAREFULLY (it will be very thick- sew slowly) stitch the gathering in place. It should look like this (sorry this pic is upside down)

7. Finish the edges of the tan bow center- Take one of those center strips that you set aside and  fold into the striped side 1/4-1/2" and edge stitch.

8. for this part, I personally wanted to save time so I hot glued the bow center together on the back if the bow. Set the bow aside and keep the hot glue warm :)

9. For optional inside pocket, cut a piece of the 3rd towel along the width of the towel as many inches as you want your pocket to be wide. That sounds quite confusing, but basically you will fold the pocket onto itself right sides together, sew on the two open sides, and the top will be two already finished edges from the towel and about 8" deep. Turn the pocket right side out.

10. Pin the inside of the pocket 1 1/4" from the top of bag

11. Stitch your pocket down and it should look like this.

12. Sew side pieces to the front of the bag right sides together (making sure that all pieces have finished edges of the towel as the tops) with 1/2" seam.  Continue by sewing both side pieces right sides together onto the back piece of the bag. Press seams. you should end up with a tube  like the next picture.

 13. Pin the bottom piece to the bottoms of all of the sides of the bag with right sides together  with 1/2" seam.

14. Fold your strap under 1/4" and pin to edge of  front piece of bag 3" in. Stitch at edge of your fold and about 1/4" up from that. Results should look like next picture

15. I then used my handy glue gun to just glue that cute little bow right on to the top/center of my bag on the same side as my pocket, covering the stitches attaching  the pocket.

And here you go: