Gotta Go Bag

My Dad had a silly thing he said, along the lines of " I thought I was wrong once, then realized that I was mistaken." Well, I did one of those today.

I completed my Gotta Go bag. I got the pattern on my last shopping spree. A friend bought it for me, after I promised to make her one. This is my first attempt and it's a good thing I am keeping it for me.

Here are those cute kitties at the movies.

That fabulous handbag is on the other side.

The bag opens into three compartments, and one of them is zippered. (Doggie fabric for the lining).

Card pockets and slip pockets in the outer compartments.

Inner zippered compartment is a bit smaller then the other two.

Room for your phone, a credit card, driver's license, a bit of cash, your keys, all the essentials. Perfect for a trip to a quilt show, or some other outing where you are taking a tote and don't need your whole purse.

Now, for the non-error that I then turned into a real error.

I thought I had put the zipper into the inner compartment, the wrong way, so I figured I would put the outer zipper in the opposite way to the pattern instructions and it would be fixed.

Sadly, I had done the inner zipper correctly, and now the outer zipper runs into the wrist strap. If I had put it in, the way the pattern said, the tail of the zipper would be tacked to the inner pocket on the other side, tidy and out of the way.

I also need to look at the whole construction of the bag. The directions have you scrunching the entire bag between the last pieces, in order to give everything a clean finish, however, the fusible fleece makes the bag very thick and the side pieces are quite small, so sewing is really difficult. My first thought is to use two layers of Shapeflex interfacing on the outer pieces, instead of fusible fleece. I might try canvas with one layer of interfacing, instead of the fleece. I also think a handbag zipper would work better then an all purpose one for the outer zipper.

I got a paper copy of the pattern at a LQS, but you can find a PDF version on Craftsy.