I've been busy hand sewing and have made myself a new bag!

April 2010:

I was going through some old jeans of my Son's that have been lying on my "use for pet bedding & toys" pile (I normally use them to make "rustle tunnels" for the ferrets and Fleecy lined "Hammocks" for the chinchillas) and I had an idea or a new bag and after several days I'd made this for myself!

I had to sew it by hand, as my mum still hasn't fixed the tension on my machine and given it back to me, and I'm way too much of a bloke to know how to do it myself.

I sketched out a rough shape of the size I wanted and used the "waist" area of the jeans as the base.

I cut it straight across the bottom, turned it in and sewed it shut.

I decided to keep the pockets on both the front and back as this would give me lots more places to stash stuff inside.

I cut another piece of denim, the same size as the "waist / bag" area as I wanted a "flap" at the front covering the pockets and keeping everything safe inside... this is the part I later "patch-worked".

The inside I lined with red and white striped Linen, and sewed a spare pocket from another pair of jeans onto the middle back, this is a great size for keeping my purse safe inside.

I then made a long shoulder strap by cutting a wide strip of fabric from one of the legs that were left over, I rolled this over and over until it was the right width, and then sewed the side seam of it all the way down the edge. While I was lining the bag, I left two gaps inside, one on either side and after I made the strap, I sewed the ends of the strap into each of these gaps, I finished the strap with a small label I took off the back of another pair of jeans, as the strap is so long it had a seam in the centre where I had joined two pieces together, so I covered this on the outside with the label.

It took several days as each stitch was sewn by hand including the outside patch-working but I'm very pleased with the result and better still it's totally unique, it's also like the "Tardis", so I don't really have any boundaries in terms of what I can take with me anywhere, with this bag I can take it all!