Sewing A Flower Bag: The Pattern (Part 1 of 3)

I am temporarily sharing a house with someone who enjoys sewing bags as much as I do. It is an absolute thrill to finally meet up with someone who shares at least one of my passions with me, after sewing in isolation for so long. When I realized that we had this hobby in common, I promptly fetched my sewing machine and partial fabric stash from home so that we could sew together. I decided to design a brand new pattern to kick start our sewing together. I show you how to copy this pattern yourself in today's blog. In the following two blog I will show you how to construct the bag and how to sew the flowers.
You can read Part 2 and Part 3 here.

I use paper that was used to wrap some glassware in at the store, to draw my pattern on.

I start by creating some square edges to work with.

I then measure 41 cm in width for my bag and cut the paper accordingly.

I also measure 41 cm in height and mark the pattern accordingly with a line to form the square.

Find the center of the line and construct a line perpendicular to it.

Create a curve that is aesthetically appealing to the eye, for the top of the bag.

Fold the pattern in half.

Cut the top of the bag on the fold so that the two sides will be exactly the same.

I did not have a compass at hand and struggled a bit to cut the hole in the handle just right.

I drew the hole on the fold.

I also cut it on the fold.

I did not like the shape when I opened it.

I adjusted the hole.

I trimmed it on the fold.

This time the opening was much more appealing.

I decided to adjust the top of the handle ever so slightly.

It was once again trimmed on the fold.

I was finally satisfied with the shape of the bag.

I jotted down some cues for myself; cut 2 from the fabric and 2 from the lining.

Next, I drew a rectangle to measure 41 cm by 20 cm.

My notes told me that I should cut 2 from fabric and 6 from the lining.

The flap of the bag measured 17 cm by 6,5 cm. Cut 2 from fabric.

I used a tablet bottle to cut the center of the flowers.

I would need to cut 6 of these.

The petals of the flowers were cut on the fold.

I would need 8 petals per flower and each petal is made from two pieces of fabric. This means that each flower needs 16 pieces of fabric for its petals. There are 6 flowers in total on the bag, meaning that you will need to cut 96 petals to construct the flowers.

In the next blog, I will show you how to sew these flowers.

Marietjie Uys (Miekie) is a published author. You can buy my books here:
You can purchase Designs By Miekie 1 here.
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