totes for my nieces . . .

One of my sisters asked for some totes for her daughters to carry their Bibles and Psalter books to church, and a tote for herself for work. I was happy to oblige, especially since this sister also makes custom hand-stamped jewelry, and I love to barter.

These are the totes for my nieces, and I hope to start on the larger tote for my sister soon. She asked me to put some inside pockets in the totes - so on one side is a slip pocket and the other a little zippered one.

The fabrics for the pink bag were from my stash, but the fabric for the other tote is a cotton linen blend from Wholeport.com. I love this print with all the little outfits from around the world, and knew I wanted to make it into a tote when I saw it. The straps are also from their shop, as well as the little 'handmade' tag sewn into the side seam (they have a big selection of cute labels to choose from).

My nieces were happy with them, and I'm happy to be moving onto the next project.  I'm also in the works this week of purging and painting some rooms in our house, and moving girls into different bedrooms. It will probably take a few weeks, but the final result will be bringing my sewing room upstairs into a bigger room, and sharing it with my girls. They'll have their own section with a table and shelf for all their scrapbooking and paper crafts, and it will nice not having that mess spread around the house anymore.