Constructing the Plum/Gold Silk Tote Bag

I've had a few emails asking about the plum and gold tote bag I made last week from a silk sari so following are photos I took while working on it.


This is the uncut sari. It was 6 yards by 44" wide of 100% pure silk and it had a deep pallu and borders on either side. I made a tunic-type jacket out of the fabric which I'll talk about another time but I wanted to maximize the use of the leftover scraps of the borders and the pallu for the bag. All pictures can be enlarged by clicking on them.

The pattern I chose was a fifteen year old Vogue pattern:

Before I did much cutting I spent some time positioning the scraps to see how best to put them together:

This is the combination I decided for the front of the bag. Pressing as you go is very, very important. I used steam on a high (for Silk) setting:

Every piece was underlined with a sturdy interfacing:

I put the strips together using a very narrow zig-zag stitch:

This is the back pocket and you can see how I pieced it from three scraps of border fabric and one narrow piece left from the pallu:

I lined the bag with a lovely satin lining fabric in pale mauve and created a tiny edging at the top of the opening by stitching-in-the-ditch right where the lining joined the outer fabric:

For the shoulder straps I lined them with a double layer of interfacing and then folded the narrow borders to the center, turned under the edges and ran a narrow zig-zag stitch down the center:

And finally I finished it with a gorgeous plum and gold Czech glass button:

So that's what I did, hope you enjoyed it.


Thanks for reading.