The Evite dreaded by every crafter, ever.

Several weeks ago, I received an evite for a "Handmade Christmas Party" which was hosted by 4 ladies up in the Santa Clarita area. One of them I have known since college, and rarely get an opportunity to see. The invitation informed me that there would be lots of food and a White Elephant style gift exchange - with the catch being that the gift each person brought had to be handmade. By them.

Enter Stress. Enter dozens of ideas being thought up and then discarded as lame or "too easy". Then I thought - I've never made a purse. It would be fun to try to make a purse. And lots of late nights on Pinterest ensued. I bought a book; The Bag Making Bible, and figured I would make something smallish from the patterns inside.

The bag I ended up making is not small. It is a carry-on sized weekend bag. How could I not? It was the cutest one in the book! I spent one day cutting the fabrics and then fusing them to the interfacings - the outside fabric to a woven interfacing and the lining fabric to a wool/fleece interfacing.
There is an outside flat pocket with a magnetic snap closure. That snap was incredibly easy to install. I'm addicted.

A flat zip pocket on one side of the inside. This was one of the more difficult things to put in. My fabric didn't want to press flat so there was a lot of pinning to be done. I broke 3 needles on this project!

3 row pockets on the other side. The bottom is hard - made so by inserting a plastic grid base which I bought at JoAnns. (I got all of the materials there. I had wanted so badly to make it out of oilcloth but the fabric is just too darn expensive and as it was this was not a cheap project by any stretch of the imagination)

In the end, I get so say, "I made a bag!!" and I didn't even have any major catastrophes during the construction! I omitted the long shoulder strap because I did not like the way it was attached to the bag (looked lazy) AND I could not find a sliding strap ring to save my life.

I came home with something which I will say was definitely equally awesome. My children think I more than came home with the better deal! Behold:

3 giant pillows. You can guess who they are. :)