Introducing the Take-Along Tote! Take her along when you are off on a full day of shopping, doctor’s appointments, or what have you. The tote converts from a generous shoulder bag to a walker or wheelchair tote. This means that the caregiver can conveniently carry the tote for the day, or your loved one can hook it on to a walker and have all the essentials at hand! We are protecting those essentials with foam – specifically Bosal’s In-R-Form Plus Fusible Foam.
Let's look at the Take-Along Tote in action!
As a pattern designer, it is a joy to be able to work with the fabric companies. This project was especially gratifying! QT Fabrics worked with Josie, a 13-year-old artist and cancer patient on her debut Delightful Dreams collection!
Josie is such a creative young person – her art uses many different mediums, including acrylics, watercolor and markers. You can get a sense of her exuberance in these Delightful Dreams fabrics.
Here’s the great part about this fabric: 50% of the proceeds for the sales of Delightful Dreams will be donated to Quilts for Kids, a non-profit dedicated to bringing comfort through quilts to kids like Josie with cancer and other illnesses and challenges across the country.
This blog post series will dive into some easy ideas for customizing your Take-Along Tote. My intention is to make this series general enough so that you can apply the ideas to other bags you might be working on.
So, let’s get into it!
We are using Bosal’s In-R-Foam Plus on this project; for a quick look at how to fuse, visit our blog post entitled “Building A Better Bag - Fusing Foam”.
This bag has a perfect opportunity for creativity – the vertical accent strip. We featured bright striped fabric (part of the collection), but you can really express yourself here!
In the version I am sewing for this series, I will add:
- Pieced accent strip;
- Flanged edges;
- Quick quilting to accent the piecing
For the piecing, I auditioned a few blenders that I had in my stash (they’re from QT Fabric’s Flourish collection). These fabrics complement the “background” fabric and the main fabric.
I cut 1.5” strips from the turquoise and teal blenders and inserted 1” pink strips into the other strips in a staggered pattern. The teal/turquoise strips were alternated with background strips.
Here we have the final accent strip that has been trimmed to the final size in the cutting list.
For flanges to accent the sides of the pieced accent strip, cut 2 strips 1-1/4” wide by the length of the accent strip. Fold in half, wrong sides together and press.
Now, stitch the folded strips to the long sides of the accent strip, matching raw edges, right sides together. I forgot to take a picture before I sewed the strip to the flap side pieces - shown below:
Depending on how you press the flanges, you can get different looks.
I chose to press the flange towards the outside.
Here's a close-up of the flange with topstitching:
Fuse to the foam flap piece, then add some quilting – I just topstitched the flanges down, then added horizontal quilting across the pieced accent strip.
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Next week, I will continue sewing up the Take-Along Tote. I look forward to discussing how to customize pockets in this project!
Until then, keep on stitching! -Kris
