Sew-Along Day 3 – The Granny Bag

Today we will finish the bag! Yay!

1. Iron on the interfacing to the long strips (handle strips) by aligning the pieces down the middle. Set aside for later.

2. Taking one of the shorter strips, pin it to the top opening of the bag, as shown below.

3. Sew 1cm from the top edge.

4. Turning the bag around, Fold over the top edge of the bias so that the raw edge of the bias fabric and raw edge of the top of the bag meet. See picture below.

5. Fold over again so you don’t see the raw edges anymore. Nice and neat!

6. Pin down the bias fabric and baste it to keep it in place. This is to keep the folded edge on the back in place while you are sewing from the FRONT of the bag. If you are confident of sewing straight, you can skip this step and just sew 0.2cm from the seam line from the FRONT of the bag. i.e from the outside! This is so that the seam line will be very neat and straight, especially if you are using contrasting thread, where the results will be very obvious.

7. The insides should look like this.

8. Now, let’s move on to the handles. Taking the two long strips, stack them so that the right sides are facing, sew along the two short ends so that it makes a loop. Press open the side seams so that it’s nice and flat.

9. Place the side seam over the side seam of the bag with the right sides facing and align the seams. Pin in place as shown below.

10. Now sew down the handles to the sides of the bag.

11. Now turn it around and fold over the bias so that the raw edges meet, just like what was done previously for the top of the bag. Pin down the sides.

12. When you reach the edge of the bag, you need to fold the handles this way. Fold the handles in half so that there will be a crease on the midline, then fold both edges towards midline.

13. Then fold both sides towards each other again so that it becomes a nice neat handle. Continue all around the bag. Baste it in place.

14. Sew 0.2cm from the seam line all around the bias and there you have it! You very own granny bag!

I really need to iron my projects before taking photos! lol 🙂