one for the road

In honor of my recent re-enamorement [+means, now that I'm back stateside] with living a more environmentally-friendly lifestyle, I've been trying to cut down on the number of paper and plastic bags around the apartment. Even though we reuse them as garbage bags, it really is never enough to even make a dent in that huge collection we've got going. So inspired by Kathleen, I started thinking about tote bags and about making some from my heaps of fabric accumulated from the pre-college years when I actually crafted on a semi-regular basis.

Been using a Supereggplant tutorial and one I found on crafster. After some head scratching and spatial-orientation-mental-gymnastics, I realized they basically do the same thing, its just a different way of doing it. Progress is slow as I get the hang of this, but I thought I'd make some simple, unadorned ones as I get used to the pattern and also as *cough* my craftsmanship could definitely use some work *cough.*

So anyways, this is what I've got so far. No interfacing or anything, but all seams are double stitched for strength. Dunno how they'll hold up against gallon bottles of milk [though they stand their ground against 3 or 4 books], but one thing I like about them is that they fold up nicely:


One of my pet peeves is that half the time I'll forget to bring a reusable bag with me when I'm out or I'll pop into Walgreens, say, on a whim, and have nothing on me to hold my purchases. This way, though, I can just fold a tote up and slip it into my purse, and it'll be on my body to accomodate all unexpected purchases.

Hopefully I'll get faster at making these as time goes on. Eventually when I have enough for each purse/bag that I own [erg, sighs, I've got a little bit more to go], and hopefully I'm not too tired of these by them [such fast gratification though! Projects with a clear end in sight!], I'll start making some sets for friends and such.

EcoBonus: linings = thrifted linens. :-).