Teardrop Bag: Completed!

I had hoped to share this the end of last week, but Mr. Sun has been less than cooperative for me to be able to get decent pictures. Well, not cooperative on my schedule, at least! The nerve...

First let's have a little reminder of what the Teardrop Bag is supposed to look like, since I went a little in my own direction. Anybody surprised?! :)

I chose to make the small version, and I'll be the first to admit I'm a terrible judge of size when looking at finished dimensions on bags & such. And honestly, I'm not even certain I looked closely at the finished dimension before I got started. I knew what fabric I had on hand that I wanted to use (remember, I'm trying to sew all projects from my stash), and I knew I didn't have enough for the large bag. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with how it turned out, and it's really a perfect size if you want a nice, small bag to throw a few things into & run out the door. But for me, it's definitely not big enough (and doesn't have nearly enough pockets!) to be an everyday purse. Good thing I didn't make it with keeping it in mind.

I mentioned before (and had issues!) that I chose to put the pocket on the outside, rather than inside, of my bag. Because of the size, it would have been more of a divider on the inside than a pocket, so I figured it would be more useful on the outside.

I just used pre-made bias tape to edge the top of the pocket to add a little extra contrast. I toyed around with the idea of doing it like the side pockets on the Cosmo Bag, but in the end stuck with the bias tape.

Because of the width of the pocket piece, I couldn't really figure out how best to do the pleat so that the finished width was the same size as the pocket. I'm still not sure how those of you who did the pleats correctly did it, but I'm okay with how mine turned out. The pleat kind of "opens up" to add more space.

The opening of my bag ended up really small, and there was absolutely no way I was getting it in the machine to add the side hips. It's a cute detail, but thankfully I don't really miss them. I don't think they would have interfered with the exterior pocket, if I remember correctly when I was trying to add them, they cam just to the top edge of the pocket.

Overall, I think the pattern was a good one. I think this size would be perfect if you wanted to make one for a little girl who loves purses, although you'd probably want to adjust the strap length in that case. I didn't get any pictures of myself holding this purse, but it does fall pretty much the same as it shows in the book photo.

And you know I can't go without saying - I still think this bag was easier than the Cosmo. ;)

Until next time...