Here is a cool bag I made a month or so ago. I got the idea out of a Home and Garden magazine my sister gave to me. (thanks sis!)
I had some fabric that I just loved but could not figure out how to use it in the best way. Part of the problem is I did not have very much of it. It was acquired through a mystery box sale on Ebay. Then I saw this idea and I love how it turned out.
Home and Garden said to fuse strips to a ready made canvas bag, but I wanted something a little bigger than what was available. Plus, I did not really want to spend anymore money on fabric at that time. Since I had some canvas on hand, I made the bag myself which meant I could also line the bag too.
First, you apply two sided fusible your fabric that you are going to strip. I used heat and bond, but you could also use wonder under and other two sided fusible. It is important to fuse first and then strip. Though if you forget, it can be applied afterward, but it would be a lot harder.
Once the fusible is on the fabric, cut it into strips anywhere from an inch to two inches wide. Cut the strips across the width of the fabric and keep them in order as you cut.
Then cut the bag body out of your main fabric and fuse the strips to the body of the bag. You will need to leave enough room on the bottom of the bag body for the part of the bag that folds under to become the bottom of the bag.
How wide you cut your strips and how many strips you cut depends on several things. If you are making a small bag, you might want to make thing strips. If your strip fabric has large images or flowers, you might want to make wider strips.
When fusing be sure that the strips are straight and that they line up at each end, so the the beginning of the strip is even with the end of the strips. You will be sewing the back bag seam together and you want to have these strips match.
Once you have the strips on your bag body, you can just sew up the bag in the usual way. Use a very simple bag pattern as you don’t want any seams or extra bag pieces to interfere with the impact.
I added a simple little flower to add a little zip to the bag and then it was done.