Sewing project – Mesh bag

I call it a shopping bag because it’s sturdy and you can put a lot of groceries in it, but I guess it could be any kind of bag. It’s made of mainly mesh material as a base and then cloth material is used for pockets and decoration. It took me a little more than 4 hours to make this last night. It’s nice but I really have to get the total work time down.

I can buy the mesh at my local sewing store (have I mentioned that the sewing store is 2 blocks away?) and I took a class on making a bag like this. I start with cutting the mesh. In class I made a very large bag for carrying my sewing machine so I knew I wanted to make my next bag smaller. This bag has a 6 x 12 inch base.

It’s hard to see in the picture but I drew lines on the mesh, marking where is the center and then 3 inches above and below. From there I began sewing on the strip of material, one for the front and one for the back.

I wanted pockets inside also so I added a piece of blue material.

My seems are not so great on the sides. We learned something called a “French seem” but I forgot how to do it correctly and it came out backwards. That means I will have to rip it out and fix it but I’m too lazy at the moment and may just leave it as is. It doesn’t look too bad, but it looks unfinished, to me anyway.

Once I put on the webbing for the handles it looks pretty good. I definitely like how the pockets came out on front.

My friend W gave me the material. It was a small piece but it worked beautifully for a small bag. And the material was a nice thick canvas. That, along with the fact that that there are lots of straight lines in the pattern, means that it was super easy to sew on.