Simple Tote Bag Sewing Tutorial

Simple Tote Bag Free Sewing Tutorial | Easy Tote Bag for Beginner. How to make a Simple Tote Bag.

 A simple and very practical bag, which we can easily do. It is designed to go to college and therefore, to fit a folder and some book.

Let's start. To do this we need:

- On the outside: a rectangle of 40 x 95 cm of black clothing . It is important that this garment is thick so that it holds well. I used tapestry clothes.
    - Inside: a rectangle of 40 x 95 cm of clothing that combines. in this case striped cotton clothing purchased from Ikea
    - For the inner pockets: two rectangles of 18 x 40 cm in red and beige (together with the striped clothes).
    - For handles: two strips of 94 x 5 cm in red and stripes and two of 65 x 5 cm in red and Stripes
    - 4 rings 2.5 cm in diameter. Bought from Leroy Merlin
    - A button
    - 1 piece of red elastic rubber

 Instructions 

 The first thing we do is the handles. We sew together one of the long strips (95x5cm) red and one of stripes throughout the length and one of the short corners, leaving 1 cm of seam allowance. When they are sewn, we will turn them and iron them so that they lie flat. We will do the same with the short strips of the handles. At the two ends, of each of the two long strips, we sew one of the rings making a bend of 3 cm. To make the handles I have chosen to make a red corner and a striped one, but if you want they can be made of the same color.

On the outer black garment of the bag, we mark two stripes 10 cm each on the long outer side. These lines will serve to mark the position of the handles.

We put the strips in place with needles and make a mark 7 cm from the end that goes to where we sew them. At 3 cm of this brand we make another that will serve us to make a square of reinforcement of the seam.

We make a bora on one of the long sides (40cm) of the inner pockets of the red and beige clothes. Once the bora is made, we place it 15 cm from the upper side of the underwear striped by the right and we take it with needles

We sew the bottom of the pockets and then make some seams to the size we want and that will serve to store those things that we need to have more at hand (mobile phone, keys, etc.). We don't need to sew the sides, they will be sewn later. We do the same with the red clothes on the other side of the striped clothes.

Fold the lining, right with right (the pockets will remain inside), in half and sew the sides leaving 1 cm of seam. This way the sides of the pockets are sewn together. Now we have to make the lower corners. That is why they fold the lining as seen in the photo, and make a mark 4 cm from the tip.

Sew along the mark we made, trim the excess tip and overcast. Do the same with the other corner.

Now we will sew the outer garment just like the lining. Fold in half, sew the sides, fold the corners, mark, sew and trim.

Fold the top edges of both bags (outer and lining) 2 cm, iron to mark them. Now we will sew the button, in the middle of the bag and 4 cm from the folded top edge.

We put the lining inside the outer garment, inside out, and hold it with pins. We take the piece of elastic and fold it in half, taking into account that it reaches to hold the button. We place it in the middle of the opposite side where we have sewn the button. We pass the ends of the elastic between the two garments of the bag. We pass a stitch along the entire upper edge of the bag, sewing the lining and the outer part together. This way the elastic will also be sewn

The inside of the bag will look like this. On one side the pockets are red and on the other beige.

And that's it, now we just have to sew the short handles, which we made before, to the rings in the same way we did with the long ones. The bag is finished!!!.