Sew a Messenger Bag

1. Introduction: Hi, I'm Stephanie with Crosscut Sewing. Another one of our really popular easy sewing projects is the messenger bag. I think that almost all of my students have made at least one. These are reversible and the strap is adjustable as well. If you don't have this bag hardware, I will show you how to make it without, but your strap won't be adjustable. To make the bag, you will need the pattern which is linked to in the description. One and 3/4 yards of webbing. I'm actually going to show you how to make a strap out of fabric for this if you don't have webbing. It doesn't really matter if your webbing is anywhere from 1 inch-1.5. The only thing that you would need to adjust is your hardware. I think this is about 1 and 1/4 inches and I have the right hardware. This strap, even though it's the same color, is a little thinner. I would just need to make sure that I had one-inch hardware. It doesn't really matter too much what kind of webbing you're using. If you're using a cotton webbing, which this is, you can finish your edges so they don't fray with some seam sealant like some fray check or you can buy these little strap ends like this as well or if you have nylon webbing, you can heat seal it with a lighter and just melt the end so that they don't fray. But for today I am going to show you how to do the fabric strap. You will need to have one sliding buckle like this. and two square rings. I also have 1/3 of a yard of exterior fabric, 1/3 of a yard of interior fabric, and 1/3 of a yard of fusible fleece. Because I am making my strap, I have an additional 1/3 of a yard for the strap fabric. I also have my basic sewing supplies. Let's get started. 2. Cut the Fabric: I printed and assembled my pattern. I just cut it out and taped the pattern pieces together at the notches. I have my bag piece and my flat piece here. I'm going to cut my fabric first. I'm going to place this pattern piece. I have both of my fabrics layered here because I'm going to cut them both at once, but you can cut them separately if you would like. I'm going to place this here. I'm just going to trace around this. I want to make sure that I placed this as close to this edge as possible because I need this piece here to be able to cut my flap out of. These are my bag pieces. I'm just going to set those aside for a moment. Then I'm going to open these up because I have two pieces of each fabric for my exterior, but I only need one piece of each for the flap. I should have enough to be able to open these out. I'm lining them up right sides together. Then I'm going to cut my flat fabric out. Just get those line up on the top there. Now I have my two flat pieces. Then I'm going to cut my feasible fleece in the same way. I'll have my bag pieces and then I'll open it up and cut out one flat piece. 3. Sew the Straps: I am going to show you how if you want to make a fabric strap, you can do that. This is handy for a few reasons. Maybe you don't have webbing on hand and you still want to make it. Another reason, especially if you're sewing with kids, is the webbing on the sides can be really thick to sew through two layers of that. If you're nervous about doing that or nervous that you're machine won't do a great job on that, you can go ahead and make the tabs and the strap out of fabric. What you would need to do is with your third of a yard of fabric, you would need to cut that in half so that you have two strips that are six inches by the width of fabric. Since our strap is 54 inches, we'll have to sew those two strips together. The way to do that is to have your two strips. I'm going to place these right sides together and overlap them like this. Then I can take a ruler, and I'm going to sew from corner to corner to join these. The reason I'm doing this, you'll see in a second, is so that there's less bulk in the seam. I would just take that and sew those together. Then just trim this off. I would iron that seam open. Just like that. What that does is it joins your two pieces with the diagonal seam. If you try to just join these with a straight line, then you'll see when we fold it next, you would be folding all that bulk in on itself. This distributes that seam when we go to make our strap. Once you've sewn your two with a fabric strips together, you can cut 154 inch piece. Then from what's left, you can cut to three-inch pieces. These are my tab pieces. I'm just going to show you. What I did was I folded this in half, this the long way. Then I brought both edges towards the middle and press them, and folded this backup and pressed it again. I did that on both tab pieces. I did that for the whole 54-inch piece from my strap. To finish the end and have a nice finished end on your strap. Because the way we do this, this will show even though it's folded like this, I'm going to take this fold it back on itself like this. You can see there how I've done that. I'm going to sew right across that edge. I'm just going to use about a quarter of an inch seam allowance. Once I do that, I'm just going to trim those corners just a little bit. When I flip this around, then I have a nice finished edge. Now for all three of these, I'm going to sew along the open edge first close to the edge, and then it's not functional, but I think it looks nice to stitch the other side as well. I'm going to go ahead and do that on my machine. I sewed around this whole piece, all four sides and I sew down the sides of each of my tabs. 4. Add the Strap Hardware: If you are using webbing from here on, it would be the same. You would do things the exact same way as we're going to do with our fabric strap. The first thing that I am going to do is I'm going to take my rectangle rings, and I'm going to just fold this tab right around that so those edges meet, so it's right in half. I'm just going to stitch as close as I can get, it doesn't have to be really close, right along this side here, and then I'm going to do the same thing on this piece. I have those guys done, I'm going to set those aside for a second. I'm going to go ahead and put my buckle on. This can get a little tricky, so I'm going to show you how to do this. I'm going to take my slider and have it in the middle and I'm going to take one end of my strap and I'm just going to go around that middle piece just like that. Then I'm going to fold this back by about two inches. Doesn't have to be two exact, and I'm going to sew this. I want to make sure that this is nice and secure. So I'm actually going to sew two lines of stitches. I'm going to so one right on top of where I already sewed here and then I'm going to sew another one. I'm going to take my rectangle ring and thread it through this end and then I'm going to take this end, this is the loose part here and I'm going to take this end, I'm making sure I'm not twisted, and I'm going to go up and over like this. So I have this, so this is my adjustable strap. Then just going to take my second rectangle ring and thread it through like this, and I'm going to bring this back by about two inches too. Then I'm going to stitch this just like I did before, so I'm going to do two lines of stitching there. That is my adjustable strap. This size I find works for both kids and adults, it seems to be long enough for most adults. We're going to set that aside for a second and we're going to work on the bag. 5. Add the Interfacing: I'm going to take my exterior pieces, which in this case are the black fabric, and I'm going to fuse my fusible fleece. With this fabric, it doesn't really matter the right side and the wrong side. But if I had a fabric like this, a printed fabric, I'd want to make sure that I was fusing my interfacing to the wrong side of the fabric. The bumpy side is the glue side, and that glue will melt with the iron and stick to the fabric. I like to iron feasible fleece from the fabric side. I find that my iron likes it better. I'm going to get these all lined up, and the flat piece too. I'm going to go ahead and fuse this. It takes a few seconds, depending on the temperature of your iron to melt that glue and make sure that it's stuck down on the fabric. I'm going to go ahead and do that on all three pieces. 6. Sew the Bag Body: I'm going to put my flap aside and take my two bag pieces. Line these up right sides together. Put some flips on. This is the top of my bag, so I don't want to sew there. But I'm going to sew this side, the bottom and this side. I'm going to use a 3/8 of an inch seam allowance. That looks like that. I'm going to do the exact same thing. This is the same way with my lining. Only difference is that I am going to leave an opening in the bottom of the bag so that I can turn this right side out when I'm done. This bag gets pretty bulky, so I would leave at least about six inches on the bottom there. Now I'm going to go ahead and sew that the same way. Now I have these two pieces sewed like this, and I'm going to go ahead and box these corners. In order to do that, I'm going to take the bottom seam and bring it to the side seam and match those up. It's easy to do this if you open the bag up a little bit. If you can see, I'm opening up these corners, bringing these two seams together. I'm actually going to go ahead and open them up so that they're nice and flat. I'm going to just check. It's a little tough to tell on this fabric, but to make sure that those are lined up. Then I'm going to just clip that and I'm going to go ahead and sew right across this edge, right from here to here. I'm going to use my 3/8 inch seam allowance and back stitch at the beginning and the end. Then I'm going to repeat that on this corner and these two corners. Now that I stitched each corner, I'm going to put these aside and work on the flat for a minute. 7. Sew the Flap: I'm going to take my two flat pieces and place them right sides together and line them all up and I don't have to sow this part here. I'm just going to stretch all along here. If you haven't sown a curve before, you just want to take it slow and if you need to adjust more than you can steer it, then you can just stop with your needle down, lift up your presser foot and adjust a little bit and just do a little bit at a time. Now, on these curve parts, I'm going to use my pinking shears, just to go right on those parts there and if you don't have pinking shears, you can clip some notches into your fabric. Just be careful not to cut your stitches. If you do snip some of your stitches, just go back in with your machine and stitch a little closer in. Now that we've done that, I'm going to turn this right side out. I'm going to go ahead and give this a good press with the iron. Now that that's all pressed on the outside, I'm going to tap stitch. I'm going to do is just stitch right along the edge of the fabric here. Just right around. I don't have to stitch this. Now my flap is done. 8. Finish the Bag: Now I'm ready to put all of my pieces together. I am going to go ahead and grab my outside piece, and I'm going to turn it right side out. [NOISE] This is where if you're not using hardware, and you're just going to cut a strap to a specific length, you can measure this on yourself and measure your strap and see how long you would want it. I'm going to attach my tab here right on the seam, and I want to open this up flat. But if you just had a strap, you would just take one of the strap ends. I'm just going [NOISE] to put this in place and I'm going to baste it. I'm going to sew a little closer to the edge than my three-eighths so that this won't show in the final bag. [NOISE] I think for this part, I'm going to go ahead and take this off. [NOISE] You see how I have it here. I have the raw edges together, so I'm going to bring the strap around the bottom of the bag. [NOISE] I'm going to make sure that it's not twisted, and line the other tab up. I'm just centering it on the seam just like that. I'm going to sew that in place. [NOISE] Actually, if you are worried about sewing through the webbing here where you have the two layers and the bag, you could still use webbing for this part, and you could make a tab out of the fabric. Then you wouldn't have to worry about that as much. Now you have to make a decision. I know that I want my bag to look like this when I'm done. But if you want it to be all the same fabric on the inside and all the same on the out, then you want to flip this around. Since I know I want mine like this, I'm going to bring this around to the back, and I'm going to stitch it on like this so that when it to closes it looks like that. Again, I'm just eyeballing this I'm not really measuring, but I'm just trying to have about the same distance here. [NOISE] I'm just going to go ahead and stitch this on. [NOISE] We're getting there. Now I'm going to attach the bag and the lining. I have my lining, and this is still inside out. So I'm going to take my bag and I'm going to put it in my lining here like this. I'm going to match up the side seams so I can see the side seam for my bag. Even though my tab is sandwiched in there, I'm going to match up the lining and the bag. [NOISE] I clip that in place. I'm going to go over here and do the same thing on the other side. [NOISE] I'm just going to adjust this a little bit and see how it fits all around. I'm just going to bring the outside and the inside together and line those up and clip all the way around my bag. [NOISE] Now we're going to sew around this whole thing. You can be a little bit more generous with your seam allowance. I'm still going to use three-eighths of an inch, but I might go a hair over just to make sure that I catch the tabs and the flap, and that the stitches that are used to baste those, they don't show. [NOISE] Just when you get to your tab, just maybe slow down a little bit. You just want to make sure that [NOISE] your machine goes over everything. [NOISE] Now, we're going to turn this through the opening that we left here. [NOISE] Before I tuck this in, I'm just going to press this opening, I'm just going to tuck that in along the fold and press that. [NOISE] Then I'm going to stitch this closed. If I wanted my bag to be reversible, I would probably hand-sew this so that the stitches don't show. [NOISE] We're almost there. I'm going to tuck this inside, and then I'm going to roll this down and get those edges all rolled out. Then I'm going to press all around there. [NOISE] It's a little tricky to do this flat, so if you have an ironing board you can just put the bag around the end of the ironing board. [NOISE] That might make it a little easier. [NOISE] I'm just rolling all that down. [NOISE] My last step is I'm just going to sew all around this part here. I'm going to top-stitch this just to hold everything together, and I'm going to just stitch as close to this edge as I can and go around the bag. It can get a little tricky. You just want to make sure to keep your strap and your flap out of the way when you're doing this. [NOISE] Our bag is finished. I love this bag because you can make it in a fun novelty print like this, or you can make it a little bit more grown-up if you want to use canvas or even waxed canvas. I would love to see your bag, so please share it. [MUSIC] Thank you for sewing with me.