Butterick B4822 – Final part

STEP 4: ATTACHING THE LINING AND FINISHING THE BAG

Hello! Today we’re going to cover steps 12-16 of our bag instructions, plus we're going to make casings for the bag handles. Are you ready?

To start, grab one of your lining pieces and place it on the bag. To that end, align the top edge of one side the bag with the top edge of the lining, right sides together. Here I will sew the lining piece that has the pocket with the back of the bag. That is just my personal preference and you can do it any way you want.

Stitch the bag and the lining together, like this.

Press the seam towards the lining. Then turn over the bag to the right side and edgestitch the lining very close to the seam, like this.

Take some time to admire your professional work. :-)

Repeat all these steps with the other piece of lining and attach it to the other side of the bag. We are not going to sew the linings yet... First we're going to make the casings for the handles. We're going to start with one side of the bag first. Place the bag pattern piece #2 on the wrong side of your bag and mark the location of the fold of the casing with disappearing ink.

Also, use 2 pins to mark the location of the casing seam.

Now fold so that the pins meet.

The casing should be 1 1/2" wide. Unfortunately, this is too wide for me to be able to use my magnetic seam guide on my sewing machine. But here's a little trick: Place a ruler in the middle of your presser foot and measure 1 1/2" from there. Use a post-it note to mark this distance...

... and use that post-it note as a seam guide.

Repeat these same steps on the other side of the bag and now are casings are done!

Now we're going to sew the lining. Pin the two lining pieces, right sides together...

...and stitch. Remember to leave an opening on the bottom so you can turn the bag inside out!

Turn the bag inside out and slipstitch the opening in the lining to close it. Look how nice it looks! Of course, now the lining is outside, so When you're done push it in to turn the bag inside out again.

Now we need to take care of those seam allowances. They need to be closed in order to finish the bag. I'm not sure if you can see where those red arrows point, if you can't click on the picture to see a larger version. This is a problem because those inner seams are way too high for me to be able to even open the bag once it's ready. So I whipped up my seam ripper (see now where the name of my blog comes from??) and opened those seams until they matched the outer ones (marked with a green arrow).

Now you will have to slipstitch the front seam allowance to the back seam allowance on each side. You will have to do this twice per side, beginning at the bottom of the casing.  Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture during the process, but hopefully this photo will help you get an idea of what the final product looks like. Do you see the area marked by the green arrow? That is a stress point in this bag. This means that the fabric may tear from opening the bag too many times, so you will need to handstitch this area over and over a few times to reinforce it and prevent tearing.

Yay! You're done with the body of the bag! Now let's install those handles. Slide them through those awesome casings you just sewed.

Now glue them back with a tiny bit of glue. My favorite is Gorilla Glue, but there are other glues you can use as well. If you use Gorilla remember that a tiny bit goes a long way! So go easy. Once you put glue on the handles you can use some painter's tape as a clamp. Wrap it tight around the whole handle as well as the opening. After a few hours, the glue is dry and the handles are ready to go! Slide the glued portion of the handle back inside the casing so it will be out of sight.

And we're done!! Now go ahead and make yourself a nice bag.

I really hope you found this tutorial useful. Don't forget to leave me any comments, questions, etc. I would love to hear how your bag turned out!

My next project will be the popular Schoolhouse Tunic! Stay tuned!!