Work, Home and Family: Homemade Gifts Part 3: A Dance Tote Bag

The Dance Tote Bag I made for my daughter for Christmas! She loves it!

So, I made this tote bag for my daughter for Christmas - I apologize for the mediocre photo (all the good ones have her face in them!). 

I used an online tutorial I found here and it took me about 3 hours with several interruptions to make this bag.  I do sew but sporadically and I'm pretty impatient about it so this wasn't a difficult project to do and I'm quite pleased with how it turned out!  The tutorial shows a serger, which I don't have, so you can totally make this without one.  Just backstitch and clip your seams. 

Before sewing the inside and the outside of the bag together, I added an extra pocket (square flap sewed with a pleat on each end) and two loops of elastic to hold my daughter's dance shoes.  The extra pocket holds her jazz shoes and the two loop each hold one tap shoe.  I used her shoes to measure the size I needed for these and sewed them into the inside layer of the bag before I sewed the two halves together.

My Cost: $0 since I already had the material, etc. 

Your Cost: Will vary depending on the material you use. I purchased the material on 50% off sale a year or two ago for $4.50/yd (regular $9/yd).  I bought two yards of the black-on-black print on the bottom (music staffs and notes print) and one yard of the polk-a-dot.  So this cost me $13.50 for three yards of fabric.  Thread and elastic will cost a couple of dollars each. My Aunt gave me lots of elastic a few years ago and I had thread from other projects.

I have a ton of fabric leftover from this project and I will use it to make a matching suit pack for my daughter to use for her dance costumes.   I'm also hoping to have enough to make a little zippered bag to hold her hair "stuff" (I have a wipe-out zippered make-up tote for her make-up).

What did you make this week?

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