I spied-a-bag

When I decided to wear my Misery costume to GAMMA.CON this year I also decided that I needed a bag to go with it. I went through an episode of Ruby Gloom (The Last Train to Gloomsville – because they go on holidays and therefore must have bags) and found some options.

I decided on the small maroon bag in the centre which has Misery's spider seal on it. She can be seen carrying it in other episodes.

To get the required size of the bag I put my drink bottle, phone and purse (the intended contents) on a piece of paper and drew a rectangle around them. The skeleton of the bag is buckram with gardening wire around the top and base.

I was making up my method of construction as I went, never quite sure that what I was planning next would work. But it all worked out in the end.

The outer layer is a sample of curtain fabric that's been in the stash for years which I edged with rickrack braid.

The top is all rectangles with wire around the centre edges. (Sorry if that doesn't make sense – I could barely keep the concept in my head when I was doing it). I put a zip in one side to create a pocket to keep small things I wanted to access easily (Lip balm... it's for lip balm. Lip balm is so important to me that it gets specially designed pockets).

I sewed the top and bottom right sides together. The wire made it very difficult to turn it out but I'm not sure how else I could do it. And ta-da:

The spider motif is hand painted onto green fabric that is wrapped over a buckram disc. I had to use purple paint instead of black because purple was the closest thing I had on hand and it was night-time so the shops were shut. The back closes with snaps. The handles stay upright and right angled because the fabric is reasonably stiff and I ironed them that way.