Made by a Fabricista: Home Decor Meets Duffle!

How do you use those lovely home decor prints that are everywhere? Every fabric store I enter has eons of choices...so many pretty colors, textures, and the heft is just awesome, especially if you want to make something that will withstand some wear and possible tear...enter the overnight bag!

Bag 'Front' pocket

This is a cute little pattern from Simplicity 2274, to be precise. I've made duffle bags for the men in my family a few years ago. The girls were a little chuffed to say the least. When I spied this pretty home decor print on Fabric Mart's site, I knew it had to be and now one lucky lady would get her own bag!

Plenty of room, even if you are a messy packer, like me!

Home decor fabric is lovely to work with. I used two yards of it for the bag and enough left over to make a little matching clutch to use for whatever the lucky daughter or daughter-in-law likes. The colors are vibrant and the design is woven into the fabric. This is a nice, quality piece and not at all like some of the home decor fabric your great-grandmother may have used. These are modern prints with fun colors!

Little matching makeup bag

I followed the directions for the bag pretty much as written but since it is a bag I am creating, I chose to eliminate a few of the outside pockets and to line the insides with a pretty orange fabric I also purchased from Fabric Mart. It sort of gives a satiny feel to the inside of a bag, which in my mind makes it girly!

Bag Side

When working with home decor fabric, I like to serge all the edges prior to assembly. I layered each piece with the the batting, lining, and of course my pretty geometric pieces and serged the edges. I just find this makes life easier when making a bag such as this. If you don't own a serger, a simple zig-zag stitch will do the trick.

Bag bottom, see where the straps attach?

The contrast fabric on the handles was from my stash and is a simple cotton print that highlights the green.

There is batting between the outer fabric and lining and as well as all these fabrics sewed, I had zero issues. I did use my walking foot which I love to stitch the layers together. Don't have one? No worries, you can still get a great result when sewing home decor fabric, you'll just want to pin carefully and abundantly to match your edges and keep them straight and even.

And the decorative stitch

I wanted to highlight the contrast on the bags and decided to use a decorative stitch to attach the straps to the bag. How fun!

Top zip, see, I even used a decorative stitch there!

I enjoyed making this bag! Using home decor fabric might be something you hadn't thought of but try using it in unconventional ways. Jackets, pants, skirts, purses, totes, overnight bags, and even home decor items are all great uses for this fabric!

You can find Fabric Mart's selection of Home Decor fabric HERE.

Thanks for reading!

Sue from Ilove2sew!

Made By A Fabricista: Embracing Winter in Wool Boucle

As winter drags on, the cold weather is such a bummer to me and feeling uncomfortable and cold so often is rough. Meanwhile, I listened to a podcast all about how people in very northern countries deal better with the onset of dark, freezing winter with a radically different mindset of embracing the inevitable season by reframing the chill as refreshing and the opportunity to spend most time indoors as cozy. I can do that! I found a gorgeous, quintessential wool boucle suiting in black and white to make myself a luxurious outer layer while I’m outside attempting to embrace the sting of dry winter air… It’s kind of working. So classic, so chic! Wearing boucle is always an uptown move and I certainly do feel sophisticated in it. This black and white houndstooth combination feels especially Old Hollywood, and what a treat to make something with this! I sewed the Daphne Jacket from Vivian Shao Chen. There are no closures, and the shape is boxy and very easy to wear over multipl...

Made By A Fabricista: Valentine’s Day Cozy Lounge Set

What comes first: the pattern or the fabric? How do you make your sewing plans? Throughout the month of January, my social media feeds were flooded by fabulous sewists sharing sewing resolutions and goals, and designing thoughtful plans for their 2025 makes. While I am a big planner in my day-to-day life, when it comes to my creative hobby, I am much more spontaneous. I find that fabric design and texture often inspires me most so I typically look for fabulous prints or bold colors and let the fabric tell me what it wants to become. As I turned my attention to my first-ever (!) Fabricista make, I wanted something to get my creative juices flowing. One evening, Fabric Mart shared an Instagram story that highlighted their Dusty Mauve Sweatshirt Fleece . It had a nice stretch, was fleece-backed, and was a muted baby pink that spoke to me. It was soft and feminine, perfect for a cozy day or night by the fire. I immediately knew I wanted to make a cute pair of sweatpants for a fun Vale...

Made By A Fabricista: Sewing + Running

It’s not every day that I get to mix two of my favorite hobbies. Especially when one hobby is sewing and the other is running. You can’t sew and run at the same time, but, you can go running in something that you sewed! With this realization, I embarked on my first hobby-merging adventure. We’ve had some frigid temperatures in Pennsylvania this winter. Since I’m an outside, stroller-pushing runner, I bundle up my son and myself before I hit the road. The temperature feels 20 degrees warmer for outside runners than the outside air. For the children being pushed in the stroller though, it feels about 20 degrees colder. With these differences in temperature for each of us, layering is the only thing that ensures that we both stay perfectly warm. My running wardrobe has been lacking a warm top layer. My son’s wardrobe would also benefit from having another warm layer, so I knew pullovers were what I should make. Inspired by a name-brand ¼ button-down fleece pullover I saw,...

Fabric Mart Fabricistas

Search This Blog