See & Sew Pattern B5596 - Doctor Who Tote Bag

As I head back to start a new semester at work, I'm very excited to take my new lined tote bag.  This is a great little bag!

I picked up this pattern on sale at JoAnn Fabrics.  I like the tote bag style - it looks really cute!  And I had several Doctor Who fabrics that were begging to be used so, I made View A, the chevron tote bag.  

Upon cutting out the requisite pattern pieces - of which there are many! - I had to figure out how to sew them together following the pattern picture.  It was a bit challenging at first, but I was eventually able to get them connected when I ignored that the ends somehow didn't all line up into a straight line like they did in the picture.  I'm still not sure what I did wrong!

Next up, was connecting the the two panels to make the chevron patterns.  This was tough and required a big of ironing to ensure that the seams were really flat. It took a bit of time, but I got the chevrons mostly lined up.

 Picture on the left shows the chevrons meeting up perfectly up top and less so on the bottom. the picture on the right is the joining of the front and back panels of the bag. 

After the sides were made, I was then supposed to attach the fusible fleece piece to the chevrons.  Somehow, I messed this up, and I fused it to the lining, because the lining was much bigger than the chevron pieces.  I have no idea how this happened, so I don't even know what lesson I should have learned from this mistake!  Oh well.

Sewing up the handles was pretty easy, but it's done in two parts.  The first part was sewing the strip over the chevrons.  As you can see in the picture above, the Doctors' faces are all sideways, which is how I wanted it to look.

The second part was to add fusible fleece to the top part of the handles, and sew them in half then attach them to the inside lining them up with the part that was already attached.  Here was my Lesson Learned: Pay attention to cutting layouts!  The doctors' heads were vertical instead of horizontal!  It looked so weird, so I had to re-cut and re-make the top part of the handles.  Thankfully, I had enough fabric left to do this the right way.

The original cut

Finally, I added the lining and then topstitched the upper edge.  I was concerned the bag would be too small, but honestly, it's the perfect size to carry my papers and materials to and from class.  I love it!  

While I love this bag, I do not think I'd mess with the chevrons again.  I'd make the bag but just do a solid pattern.  Chevrons were too tedious for me and not all that gratifying.  I might also try to work in a pocket hack and perhaps even a zipper top.  Stay tuned!