I’m totally in love with Sara’s beautiful Indigo Seneca Creek Bag. The leather accents make it a cut above!- Betz

Hello! It’s Sara from Radiant Home Studio. You may already know that I love making bags. It’s funny, because I usually carry the same bag everyday until it’s worn out! Betz recently released a new pattern, the Seneca Creek Bag. Though I rarely swap bags, I’m sure I will actually use this bag instead of my big tote bag on occasion. You may have seen a few versions made by “Bag of the Month” club subscribers, and now the pattern is available to everyone.

 

 

As I shared, I usually carry around a big tote bag filled with all of my “mom gear”. The kids are getting older, my husband is working regular hours now, and I’ve had more opportunities to go out by myself. The big tote bags are excessive when I just need my wallet and couple of other essentials. I’m sure I’m not alone, right? I feel pretty silly taking extra diapers and wipes on a date with my husband. The Seneca Creek Bag is just the right size for those kid-free outings.

 

 

The bag has a nice envelope style front pocket, as well as an interior zipper pocket. The strap is adjustable so that the bag can be worn as a cross-body purse, carried as a shoulder bag, and even threaded through your belt loops and carried as a waist pouch.

 

 

Most of my wardrobe is blue, so when I spotted these great indigo prints from Michael Miller I knew they would make a modern, neutral bag that I could carry with most of my everyday clothes. I used scraps of leather for the flap tabs and brass hardware to give the bag a more upscale look.

The leather I used was too thick to sew right sides together and then turn right side out. Instead, I cut the seam allowances off the flap tab pieces (a rotary cutter makes straight, even edges) and sewed them with wrong sides together.

I also substituted small gate-rings for the ½” d-rings. My local store didn’t carry the brass colored d-rings I needed. I actually found these small gate-rings in the jewelry section of the craft store. You may be surprised at what you can find in the jewelry section to dress up your bags. Besides using small hardware items like the gate-rings, you might also try attaching beads or feathers to your zipper pull to add a unique touch to your bags.

 

 

I followed the rest of the pattern instructions with no changes. I thought the envelope pocket might have some tricky parts, but the directions made it simple to construct. One of my favorite features of the purse is the contrast fabric at the bottom of the bag and on the pocket flap. If you like to mix and match fabric designs from collections, I think it would be fun to experiment with Seneca Creek Bag. Overall, it’s a versatile bag pattern that goes together fairly quickly and easily. I’ve already transferred my wallet and essentials over to my new purse and I’m planning to take it out with me soon!

 

Find Sara: Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest

 

This post is part of the Betz White Sewing Collective series. Content is written by compensated contributors expressing their own views and opinions.