Here is the bag I made for my mother for Mother’s Day. The blue straps are an unusual color and I used every inch of that type of strap I had to make the bag. In fact, I used short handles because I didn’t have enough of the blue to make two long handles.

Our son, Philip graduated in May from University of Virginia. I made three bags to give to the families of three of his classmates. These bags are the perfect color and, which the logo decals, look like they might have come right out of the UVA bookstore.

Years ago, I was waking in the afternoon after sleeping all day after a night shift. An idea came into my brain as to a way I might be able to make strap bags in a different and perhaps more efficient manner. I couldn’t wait to sit down and give it a try. It worked so well that it has been the basis of my bag construction since then. These three bags were made with a variation that I hoped would make me even more efficient. I don’t think you could tell by looking at them but, I tried something different on these. I will need to practice some more before I will know if it is actually better or not.

I have been sewing the two base circles parallel to each other all around, butting the ends of each strap together. Then, I started circling the straps the rest of the way up. This time, I actually sewed the contrasting color to a full strap and started circling right from the beginning.

I have been spending quite a bit of time and effort lately on zippers. The beauty of my bag design is that it is it uses the shape and edges of the straps efficiently. Unfortunately, it is a real pain to add a zipper to them, as I have been making them. So, I have made several bags lately trying to figure out a slick way to zipperize them.

The Hancock Fabrics near us is going out of business so I was able to buy a bunch of blue zippers at a good deal to go with the black ones I scored at Fabmo.

Here is a blue bag I made with a zipper. More zipper ideas to follow!

When visiting our daughter recently in New York City, I had the chance to give her BFF, Deb a bag. She looks appreciative!

My friend, Eric, came to own several firehoses. Though they had never been used, they were worthless unless someone could come up with an idea for repurposing. He offered one to me to see if they could be made into a bag. I was skeptical but gave it a try. Though they presented some interesting challenges, here is what I came up with on first pass:

First, what the firehose looks like:

What the bags looked like:

And it made me happy:

And it made Eric happy:

Oh, and here is a salt shaker I made out of the nozzle and a connector:

I mentioned before that I got some padding at Fabmo. Here is a bag that has padding sewn between the layers of the bottom and the first two rows of straps on the sides. The rest of the rows are made of double straps so it is heavy, thick and supports itself to stand up very well.

Yellow and blue were the color of the week;

I spent some time experimenting with square bottoms on some bags. they turned out OK but were a lot more work than my usual method.