How to Make a Tote Bag Using Charm Packs

Hi, I'm here to talk to you today about the wonderful world of pre-cut fabrics. You're probably familiar with fat quarter fabrics, which is an 18 by 21 inch cut of fabric. It's a standard commodity in most quilt stores and it's a wonderful and versatile piece. What you might not be familiar with though are the more recent introductions of charm packs, layer cakes, and jelly rolls and a lovely assortment of other cuts. I'm gonna talk to you today about what to do with a charm pack.

A charm pack consists of a five inch by five inch piece of one of each fabric that's in the line of fabric from the manufacturer. We really love about charm packs is everything matches. The color coordination is done for you. I'm gonna show you how to do these these bags. This is the same bag.

Well, this one has ties on the side and this one, of course, does not and they look completely different but it's the same bag made with charm squares. When I'm working with charm squares, the first thing that I like to do is separate them out into different colors, because I have like a nice random feel to my bags' sides. So I've got these separated out and I'm going to lay out my charms in five columns, three rows. So I'll start doing this and then you can switch things out how you like them. I like to put my fabrics where I don't have the same fabrics together and the same colors together.

So I might like a yellow down here. One of the things that I really like about charm squares is the fact that the fabric always matches, everything goes. They are preselected for me. I don't waste many and the packages are actually very inexpensive to buy. I'm an addict, I'm a collector, so I really like the fact that I can go in and I can have just a little bit of everything available to me.

So we get these out. And swap them out. There's no rules. You just put it how you like it. So that's one of my bag's sides.

A time-saving step for it is this assembly line sewing, and to get our squares ready for assembly line sewings, I flip the second row onto the first row and then I stack up these fabrics and I stack them like this, and when I go to assembly line sew, everything comes out in the right order. So I'll show you real quick what I mean by assembly line sewing, is I take the first two off the stack and I sew here. These are the ones that I laid out right sides together. And then I take the second two, and without snipping my thread, I just feed it through the sewing machine and I sew down this side, and I do the same thing with the third. So now I have three rows, two columns, and you open these up after they are sewn and you take the next one on the pile and you sew it to this square, and you continue in that fashion.

You open this up and sew the next square. And when you're done with that, you have something that looks like this. Now we have our three pieces that go with our tote front ready to go. We sew those all together and this is our tote side. So if you notice that my tote sides don't match up with the fabrics that I cut earlier, and that's perfectly fine.

All you have to remember is that you slice this off and you square it up and you measure it and all of your pieces should be that same measurement. We're not very precise, but as long as your lining matches and your pockets match and your both sides match, you're gonna be fine. Now that you have your sides sewn together, the next step is to fuse it to the fusible fleece that looks like this. Now lay it out flat. There's a rough side of this and kind of a smooth side, and the fusible side is the rough side, and you layer your already trimmed bag side on the top of your fusible fleece where the wrong side of the fabric is against the right side of the fusible fleece, and then you take a nice hot iron and you press that all down flat and it sticks really nice to it and you get something that looks like this when you're done.

As you can see that I have top stitched around here and sewn buttons on it and added my applique to my bag side, all of which are completely optional steps. Because you've used the fusible fleece, you don't have to do anything else to it. I just like the way the little bit of quilting looks. After you've gotten your side of your tote to look the way you want it, the next step is to create some notches in the corner, and this will create a box bottom when we're all finished. And what you do is you layer your little square ruler, and this is a handy little tool, on the back side and cut.

I'm gonna use a three-inch notch. Your notch is half the depth of your bag, so if you have a three-inch notch, you're gonna have a six-inch depth on your back. And if you change the size of your notches, you'll get a different height and a different width of your bag, and that makes this particular pattern very versatile. And it just looks like that. You do that on this side and this side and you do it for both sides of your bags and your lining.

The next step in making our tote bag is to create the handles. As you see, I've already ironed on the fabric onto our fusible fleece and I have a nice piece here. The first step is to find the middle. Fold your fabric in half wrong sides together, and if you like, you can press it to make a nice crease, but you don't have to do that. Fold one side of the fabric up to the middle and fold the opposite side of the fabric up to the middle as well, and then fold those in half and pin in place.

And you continue along your handle all the way along until you have it all folded and you get something that looks like this. Sew down this side and across this side, and make sure that you catch the fold in here, and you'll have a piece that looks like this. Slide your already quilted bag sides over and do a quick measurement and find about six inches over and pin your handle to that measurement. Do the same for the opposite side and make sure you don't twist up your handles and pin in place. And before you sew these down, you can slap it up on your shoulder to make sure that you like the width that you've got going here.

The next step is to layer your fabrics right sides together and sew down this side, across the bottom, and across this side. And of course, you've already pinned your other handle to the opposite side of your bag. At this point, we have sewn our handles to our bag's sides, we've layered our bag's sides right sides together, and we've sewn down the side, across the bottom, and across the opposite side. Now I'm gonna show you how to make that nifty little box corner that helps your bag sit flat. What you do is you take your two pieces of your bag and you pull the corners out to where you have a flat side and line up the side seam with the bottom seam and kind of flatten out your seams so you have something like that and you pin that in place, and all you do...

You can pin in several places or just one like I do, depends on how comfortable you are. And then you just sew cross the flat side. Take your pins out, 'cause it breaks your needles. Ask me how I know. And that's that simple.

And I've already done the opposite side. So that's what the bottom looks like and the sides, and I will show you, you turn your back and right side out, you kinda poof up the corners that you've just sewn with your fingers on each end, and you can see it's got a real nice crisp corner to it, and the outside of your bag is done. The next step in making our tote bag is to create inside pockets. The first thing you do is draw a straight line with a pencil or a pen or crayon, if you want, across the bottom of your bag, about anywhere between 3/4 and an inch above the notch you just cut. Then you take your pocket fabric, which starts open, you fold it in half and create a crease and then open it up and place your fusible fleece against the crease, and then fold it back over.

Then you line up your pocket fabric with your drawn line right here across the edge and you sew a quarter inch away from the raw line like this. Now let's get this out of the way. And then flip the pocket up and draw dividing lines for your pockets kind of wherever you want, and we give you some guidelines in our pattern, but it can be wherever you like, and then stitch cross that. Do that for both sides of your lining, layer your lining right sides together, and sew across the sites and across the bottom as you did with the main tote, with the exception you leave an opening in the bottom so you can turn your bag right sides out. And when you're done with that, you will get a nice bag like this with pockets.

And that's all there is to the lining. We are down to the final stages of putting our bag together. You've got your main bag piece and you've got your lining piece and what you do is you tuck your main bag piece inside of your lining and you line them up on the seams at the side and you make sure that your handle pieces are between the lining and the main part of the bag. You pin around the top, make sure everything is lined up and straightened out and you don't have any creases, and you simply stitch around the top. And that's all there is to this step.

At this point, you have tucked your main bag into your lining and I'm going to show you how to turn it right sides out. We have an opening here that we left in our lining bottom, so you reach inside of that opening, grab the top part of the bag, and just start gently pulling it through that hole. Don't worry if you pop a few stitches. We're gonna sew that closed in a little bit anyhow. So cool, cool, cool.

And there. I managed that without popping a stitch. Okay, so now your bag is outside, your lining is outside. Take this end where we left the opening in the lining and just, you can pin that and hand stitch that or machine stitch this opening closed. Then tuck your lining inside your bag, kinda using your hand to straighten out the corners and get them all straightened out.

So now we've tucked our lining into our bag and we are going to top stitch around the outside here. Make sure you line up the seams and roll them out flat, and we're gonna top stitch up here so we get a nice finished look something like this. This is where we've top stitched around our finished bag. As you see, it reinforces the handle and gives it a really nice finished look. At this point, you can sew your optional ties on the side as well.

And that's all there is to making a charm square tote bag. We love these new products, these charm squares and jelly rolls. There are a lot of great patterns out there. They're economical, they're easy to use, they're time savers, so give one a try.