A "Squishable" Carry on Bag!

Wow.

Why do these things happen to me? I think I’m a sucker for this kind of thing.

But I really asked for it. I really did.

My son and his wife had 2 young lady American visitors who currently live in Morocco. After they arrived and spent a few days with them, they headed to Warsaw to check out the Old Town area. My son called me and told me that the girls needed a bag - one that would fit Ryan Air’s conservative carry on bag allottment. They were sharing one bag and on the way over, ended up having to check it.

They needed something to fit the requirements AND that was soft and squishable and that was Polish Folk design.

Interesting requirements. It is almost as if my son had seen my fabric collection!

So, of course I said, “I can come up with a bag by tomorrow if they really need one.” I knew their flight was out the next day.

So I looked up the requirements for Ryan Air’s carry on baggage allowance and proceeded to adjust the 6 pocket tote bag we have on our website - made it bigger.

I also added a placket area on the top and put in a zipper so it would be more secure as they carried it on the airplane. This way things would not fall out of the top.

And so here it is. I did work on it until about 10 that night and stopped because I was tired. I then got up at 6 ish and had it all ready to go, including pictures by 9 am.

I did make a mock up of the basic bag first with scrap fabric - fabric that I didn’t care about just because I couldn’t visualize the sizes properly without doing it.

I could have done the zipper placket part better - but I was winging it. I will do it differently next time. I should have centered the long zipper on both ends of the placket so that it would open freely on both ends. It opens on the one long end of the zipper but of course, has a closure on the other end. If you watch the video below you can see what I’m talking about.

 
 

I did use heavy duty fusible interfacing on the bag but nothing on the lining. It would probably be a tad bit more durable if I used a light weight interfacing on the lining as well. But then a lot of bags don’t do that.

I also did put in two inner zipper pockets so they could put things in there and they wouldn’t fall out. Of course there are 6 outside pockets as on the one on the website.

 
 


The basic 6 pocket tote pattern is for FREE on our website. It’s here - with all pictures and measurements needed to make a tote bag with lots of pockets!

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little break from quilting and into the world of bag making!

It sure is quicker than making a quilt! That’s for sure.

:)

Thanks so much for coming along with me on this journey.

Have a great day wherever you arer reading this!

Becky PetersenComment