Notebook of a dreamer: Fat-Quarter square bag pattern

Earlier this week I went with my mum for a day out to Hampton court Palace (making the most of our Historic Royal Palace's membership before it expires!) and to visit one of our favourite fabric shops, creative quilting. While she was gathering supplies for some of her projects, I found a lovely piece of labeled yellow fabric in the off-cuts bin - a printed cotton fat quarter incorrectly labeled £1.75 (instead of £5) - success! I decided that I wanted to try something different to other projects I've sewed before: a little bag to put hair clips & those sorts of things in for my rucksack to keep everything organised...and I think my inexperience in creating my own pattern shows here as it turned out to be about 6 times larger than I had wanted...I think I can fit a few more things than just hair clips in it! I am still pleased with it, it was incredibly easier and took only around an hour to complete (even with trying to make it up as I went along and fiddle around with things!) so was very satisfying. I'll have to have another go at making a smaller size later, but for now here is the first pattern.

Hampton Court Palace

Supplies
- 1 fat quarter fabric outer
- 1 fat quarter lining
- 1x 10" zip
- Light weight interfacing
- Usual sewing things (sewing machine, thread the fabric, pinking shears, ruler, needles)

supplies

Steps

1) Iron the fabric, and cut 2x 11" by 14" rectangles from each of your fabrics, and 1x 2.5" by 8" rectangle of your outer fabric (so you have 5 pieces in total).
2) Cut the interfacing to size, and iron onto the wrong side of the outer fabric.
3) Iron down 1/2" of one of the longer edges of each of your 4 big rectangles, wrong sides together.

ironed top edges

4) Iron down the longer sides of the 2.5" by 8" rectangle by 1/4", wrong sides together, then fold in half (still wrong sides together) and iron again. Sew along the open edge, and set aside to use later.

sew the handle

5) Sandwich the edge of the zipper between the ironed down edge of one of the outer pieces (on the same size as the zip pull) and one of the inner pieces, then sew using the sewing machine's zipper foot.

outer fabric on the top

lining fabric on the underside

6) Repeat step 5, adding the outer and inner fabrics to the other side of the zip.
7) With the zip at the top, fold everything in half with the outside fabrics together, and sew straight along the bottom.

sew closed the bottom

8) Finish the seam by trimming with pinking shears and pressing open. Line up the centre seam with the zip, and sew the side edges closed (open the zip about half way before sewing closed so it can be turned inside out easily afterwards!).

finished centre seam

closed ends (with chamomile tea because its the evening!)

9) Puff up the bag, and fold the corners in towards the centre to create your desired height (my corners were about 2.5" high), marking the folded line with pins.

mark the folds

10) Flatten the bag again, and sew straight across the marked lines for the 2 corners at the edge of the bag with the bottom of the zip. Cut off the excess fabric, and finish the seams with pinking shears.
11) Without sewing, cut off the corners at the end of the bag by the top of the zip, about 0.5cm outwards from the pin markers. Thread the handle in through the holes you have made, and line it up to go across the centre of the top of the bag, and to make it the length you'd like.

add in the handle

12) Sew the top corners closed at the level of the pin markers, trip off the excess fabric, and finish the seams.
13) Sew in all of the threads, and turn the bag right-side-out, it is now finished!