Sewing lemonade

Last week I made a bag for a friend from more of the vintage bedspread:


but it turned out to be best suited for a woman over 6' who does serious carting around of bulky yet lightweight items such as bathing gear or small-child changes of clothing or perhaps knit sweaters in progress and who includes bright pink chenille-esque bedspreads on her list of fashion must-haves, or perhaps a less than statuesque girl who not only loves pink bedspread fashion but also likes having a giant bag on her hip as a just-in-case pocket and a place to stash the source of the knitting she's doing while walking.

(Should I really be sewing for myself, though?)

Anyway it wasn't going to suit the friend I intended it for so I tried again, this time with less than a meter of upholstery cotton found in a bargain bin, a lucky discovery because it takes ages to have anything cut in the only fabric store I can get to and the bargain bin - usually full of polar fleece or polyester georgette - is often my only recourse when hunting for stash supplements.

I have this 'thing' I do when making a tote bag of not pinning or using a pattern piece when I cut, and either eyeballing the seams as I stitch them or, more likely, taking the straightest route along a curving edge cut under the aforementioned conditions. And with this bag it came back to bite me.

Like, see this nice interior pocket I made for keys and a phone?


I sewed it on way too close to the top of the lining and had cut the lining way longer than the outer layer turned out to be. Also: I stitched the lining way narrower than the outer bag. Curses.

Enter lemonade:


Yep, I just made the lining a design feature by letting it peep over the top, and then put decorative tucks on either side of the center print. I also used faux-denim quilting cotton for the backs of the handles because I didn't have any long enough pieces of denim to make it really matchy. But I think that's lemonade too because the handles are a lot less bulky this way.


I like how it came out. Wonder if I can make lemonade the same way twice?