Learning to Sew: Reversible Bags

My grandmother was a seamstress.  My mom and sister sew like champs.  I didn't want to learn to sew as a kid (bad experience in Brownies involving plastic canvas, which was sewing, as far as I was concerned), so now I'm doing everything late and the hard way.  *sigh* 

I bought a book a few months ago called Stitch by Stitch: Learning to Sew, One Project at a Time by Deborah Moebes.  It arrived during Morning Sickness, so it sat for a few months gathering dust until this week.  I pulled it out and got started on making the Reversible Bag with Flat Bottom. 

Oh my word!  This book is awesome!  Moebes gives very detailed instructions, and there are tons of pictures for every step of the process.  I'm a visual learner, so pictures are very important to my understanding of directions.  I actually understood what to do!  My goal was to make a bag for my adopted camper at church.  (We do Adopt-a-Camper each year where you choose a kid going to youth camp and send him or her off to camp with a bag full of snacks and other goodies, along with the promise to pray for him or her all week.)  I wanted to make a test bag first, though.  I started with fabric I had leftover from making bed pockets for me (for camp) and my nieces.  Then I followed the instructions, and VOILA!

Not too shabby for a first-ever attempt!  I was really impressed by just how easy this project actually is!

Next, I pulled out some fabric from my stash in my camper's favorite colors.  (She said she likes blue, yellow, green, and orange.  Orange is the only color I didn't include.)  The denim is leftover from an ugly Goodwill dress I cut the bottom off of, then covered the rest in duct tape for a Halloween costume.  The plaid is from... something.  I bought the fabric a long time ago, and I can't remember why.  The second bag turned out even better than the first, in my opinion!  I even managed to match the plaid at the seams!!!

I spent probably 2.5 hours making the first bag.  The second bag took maybe 1.5 hours, so it's truly an easy project!  Even better, I didn't spend a dime to make either bag!  Just used scrap fabric I had lying around.  A frugal craft project, for sure!