Birthday bags

Happy new year! We have had such a gentle Christmas time... lots of pyjama days spent playing with Lego, watching Christmas films and playing games. Lovely.

At the start of December -seems an age ago- I made some messenger bags from oliver + s' little things to sew





A dream of a pattern to sew... though fairly lengthy the pattern is so well written that each step is fairly easy. I made the large size for the soon-to-be-eight-years-old Reuben and Casper so a roomy bag. The main fabric is navy cotton duck from Russell & Chapple art suppliers as it has a showerproof finish. Because the duck fabric is heavy duty I didn't have to add interfacing as the pattern suggests. For the lining I used some star print fabric from cloth kits





I used ready-made bias binding from frumble fabrics... I liked the idea of using navy contrast thread on the yellow bias binding but really all it did was show off my wonky stitches. Next time I will stick with a matching thread! The strap webbing was also found at frumble, they have a great range of colours, though next time I would try to find some heavier weight. It was rather tricky finding coloured webbing the right width for the strap adjusters, also horribly tricky to find. Any good ideas where to find?


Other than some ooops moments sewing through all those thick layers this really is a great pattern that I would happily use again.

We filled them with some Christmas stories and sent them with so many happy birthday wishes to The Netherlands for Reuben and Casper's birthday... and I'm told they are most delighted with their birthday bags!
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