Spotty pink tote bag

I feel like I've really achieved something this evening since coming home from work. Back at the Knitting and Stitching show in November I bought this fantastic pink spotty fabric and straight away wanted to use it to make a tote bag to carry my things to and from work every day.

 

I don't need to carry a huge amount of stuff, just a book, my knitting, a bottle of water, umbrella and possibly my hat and scarf. I did want something a bit more attractive than the conference freebie that I've been carrying around for a while. Tonight I finally made this happen.

I didn't use any particular pattern, but read a few online tutorials and took some basic measurements from the freebie bag that I've been using for the last few months. Most of it went quite well, but the handles are possibly a bit too thin – I didn't put enough thought into how to create them so that the raw edges were on the inside of the seam and hence the finished handles are a bit thinner than I would have liked. They appear to be strong enough though for what I need to carry around.

Tonight was the first time in a while that I've had my sewing machine out, but it felt good to do so. I need much more practice though as I could tell just how rusty I was. Fingers crossed that this is the first step towards much more sewing machine usage!