Patchouli Moon Studio: bag-of-the-month club

Sunday, June 1, 2014

The City Slicker: Bag-of-the-Month Club for June

I actually made this bag in April because I was one of Christine's bag testers for this bag. The City Slicker is the last bag of the Bag-of-the-Month Club. I have really enjoyed making these 6 bags from 6 different designers. I believe all of the designers will have their bag pattern for sale individually on their website starting in July (or thereabouts). So if there is a bag or 2 or 3 that you might like to make for yourself, you can go to their site and purchase the pattern in July or August. To see all the bags that everyone made for the Bag-of-the-Month Club, you can also go to the Flickr group here. (Be sure to keep checking back to see other bags that haven't yet been posted on Flickr) It's fun to see the variety of fabrics used and the changes that some people made to their bags. I made small changes on all of the bags that I made, mostly because I didn't have the hardware for the closures so I needed to make that change and I made a few other changes on some of the other bags as well.

For this City Slicker bag, I used some fabric that I had for several years. The fabrics coordinated with one another: stripes, dots, paisley and a handbag print. I added a couple of other fabrics I already had that went so well with these fabrics, like the near solid fabric for the handles and the peach color fabric for the front pocket and the lining fabric. I love this bag!!! Thanks Christine for designing another fantastic bag that looks fabulous and is a perfect size, not too large and not too small either. The bag I made is the advanced version of the City Slicker Bag. Christine's intermediate version has a simpler strap tab that is not rounded for easier straight stitch sewing. Also on the intermediate version, there is not a welt pocket on the back or the pleated interior pockets, but simpler slip pockets. Okay now here's my bag~

This is the front of the bag. I fussy cut my flap to show the handbag print fabric. I used a magnetic snap because I didn't have a twist lock closure and I wanted this fabric to show. The pocket has darts in the corners to give the pocket dimension.

This is the back of the bag. There is a welt pocket here.

You can see the front pocket dimension here. There is a full zipper on top. I used a metal zipper because I had it already and it was the perfect color, but it was very hard to close after the bag was made due to the curve of the bag. I mentioned this to Christine and told her she might want to warn people not to use a metal zipper because it could be difficult to open and close, so she did add that in her instructions to use a nylon zipper not a metal zipper. However, I rubbed the zipper teeth with soap and wax and zipped and unzipped the bag as I used it and the zipper is working just fine now. But you just never know with those metal zippers.

Looking up so you can see the bottom of the bag.

Lots of pockets inside this advanced version of the bag. A zippered pocket with a divided slip pocket in front, a pleated pocket, 2 pen pockets behind the pleated pocket and those have 2 more pockets on the sides. There are 12 pockets total inside and out on the advanced version. I like how this bag opens up. I sewed a ribbon all around the inside to hide the double stitching lines because my stitches weren't perfectly on top of the other stitches and that bothered me, so I covered it up with ribbon, lol!!! Christine did include this tip about using the ribbon in her pattern after I shared it with her.

The pleated pocket with more pockets behind. This paisley fabric was my favorite, but I had already used most of it making travel pillows several years ago. I had a couple of long pieces left that was just perfect to make the inside pockets.