Behold my new videogame bag. I thought I’d whip up something quick for another chance to straighten out my basic sewing skills, and this little bag was the perfect contender.

It’s the Tokyo Tie Bag from Sew Everything Workshop book by Diana Rupp. The whole thing from start to finish took me around an hour, I guess, and that was including adding interfacing.

Lining with interfacing and the outer material.

You draft up the pattern yourself based on the instructions in the book and that was actually quite satisfying. I just got the old ruler and parchment paper out – and bob’s your uncle. Having said that, I realised that the bag would be smaller than I initially anticipated when I worked on the pattern. The final result was even smaller. This is absolutely fine for the main body of the bag, but knotting the strap made it just too high for me, so I ended up sewing the two ends together.

As I mentioned above, I used a reasonably light cotton for both the outside and lining of the bag, so I also put some light fusible interfacing on the lining. This gave it a little sturdiness and it ended up about right, I think. It was a good chance to practice the French Seam finish on the bottom and, all in all, I enjoyed this a lot!

About to do the seam.

I did think about pattern-matching, but as the seam is down the middle of the bag, that seemed a little tricky for my feeble skills. I did match the pattern horizontally, and I reckon that gives it just enough symmetry to not look completely rubbish. Next time I would definitely make a bigger version, and I’ll perhaps even have a shot at drafting my own basic bag template, now that I see how straight-forward it is (!?). Famous last words…