Travel Handmade for Little Girls - Vintage Dottie and Butterick Dufflebag

[sew] tired.

But its a satisfied kind of tired that comes from staying up late to sew.

This is the Swoon Patterns Dottie Vintage Handbag. Except my daughter saw it over my shoulder when I was surfing Pinterest, and knew it was meant to be a dolly suitcase. And she begged a little.

She picked the fabric from the stash and I away I went. The pattern has a lot of prep work but once you start sewing it goes fast. I pre-quilted the exterior quilting cotton and backed it with denim to give the bag extra structure (in addition to the lining. You can't see the denim, its just a backing on the quilting on the inside). The pattern calls for craft foam for stability, but I didn't bother since I used the quilted fabric/denim combo. Much easier I think than fiddling with craft foam/gluing it along the edges, etc.

I love love love the method for zipper installation in this pattern because the end result is so professional. Its a little different than I'm used to, because the bag uses a drop-in lining. To get a feel for what I'm talking about, Swoon patterns has a tutorial for a drop-in lining that also shows their method of zipper installation. Check out the tutorial right here.  

The pattern calls for piping, which I think makes the bag. Swoon Patterns has a tutorial for making piping on their website. I found in my stash, a Nancy Zieman product that is a fusible cording to make piping - you wrap your bias strip around it and just iron in place - instant piping. Normally to make piping, you buy cording and sew the bias strips around the cording to enclose it. I love this fusible option, its speedy. Or buy pre-made piping, even speedier.

Alexa is so happy with the little travel bag. It packs in a lot of doll clothes and seems to be the perfect size. 

In other little girl news, the duffle bag:

A couple years ago, I made a dufflebag for Alexa from a Butterick 5581 pattern. I purchased fabric to make one for each of the little girls. With our trip south coming up fast, Maria was asking for her duffle bag in time to travel. 

As with Alexa's duffle bag, I pre-quilted the canvas exterior with cross-hatching but this time used a cotton drill as a backing (again, this is in addition to a lining).  I did not quilt the side panels, but used interfacing with Pellon to give it some stiffness.  I also loosely quilted the lining fabric but didn't use a backing on it - just the lining fabric and batting underneath. This has given the bag a really nice structure.

This pattern calls for a drop-in lining that is hand sewn to the zipper - but feel free to go ahead and machine-sew it down along the zipper topstitching. The lining also didn't fit very well into both the duffles I made, so I'm not sure if its human error (probably!) or just poor pattern drafting??

Maria is really REALLY thrilled with the duffle bag and its the perfect size for a little girl. 

How about you, what are you sewing? 

xo