Classic Book Bag from Burdastyle

So, here is the first of my creations to go online! It is adapted from the classic book bag how to at Burda Style (links below). It was very easy and not at all time consuming (I made it in an evening while someone else was playing Playstation...). I added an outside pocket with a bit of the lining fabric for contrast and an inside pocket made out of the outside fabric. I also added a really small pocket inside the inside pocket because both the bag and the pockets are quite spacious and I am always losing my keys down in the bowels of big bags and have to spend forever searching for them! I also added a couple of little red buttons on the handles because I thought they were cute!

When I went into the shop to buy fabric for this bag I was thinking I would probably go with a nice sturdy (and hard to get dirty) navy blue with maybe a red lining. Somehow though I left with pink! Oh well! It will wash when it gets dirty! The fabric looks a little weird in the pictures but it doesn't actually look like that, it's the ribbing of the corduroy that makes it looks so strange on the screen!

The name of this pattern appealed to me because I have a serious book addiction am constantly buying them. When I stop into a second hand book store you would think I was buying for a small army or at least a full high school literature class so I thought this bag would be awfully handy for taking book shopping. But then we were tidying the flat and after finding patterns stuffed in all my drawers, fabric scraps everywhere and assorted notions basically hiding in every nook and cranny I realised that we don't actually have the space for me to take over with all my sewing stuff. So I've decided to use the bag to consolidate a lot of my stuff into one handy place. Of course as I accumulate more and more stuff it will definitely not fit in the bag and I'll have to find another solution....maybe I'll be making my navy bag after all!

I really enjoyed this how to and ended up with a cute and highly functional bag when I was done. I've made quite a lot of stuff that at the end I thought "cute but I'll never use it". Happily this isn't one of those occasions!

Make one for yourself with:
http://www.burdastyle.com/howtos/show/1145 http://www.burdastyle.com/howtos/show/1151