purl soho {echino tote}

i cart a lot of stuff back and forth between home and work and home again.  lunch, snacks, lint brush (will the dogs ever stop shedding?), books, laptop, shoes, lab coats…so i need a suitably huge bag to accommodate everything.

for months now, i’ve been using this lululemon bag which has seen better days.  i can’t really explain why i have continued to use it, except that it was free, and relatively sturdy, and necessarily voluminous.  even after one of the straps ripped out, i continued to cart it back and forth, carrying it like a giant paper bag.  it wasn’t until some of the preachy statements started to irritate me, that i really started thinking about acquiring a new bag.  one with handles.  and no pretentious quotes or semi-subliminal messaging.  enter the apple-picking tote.

i saw this pattern on the purl bee ages ago and thought it was ever so adorable and sturdy looking – perfect for my needs.  i scoured my stash for suitable fabric combinations until i realized i had a lovely piece of lumpy linen and another of an echino print i’ve had for years because i had to have it but was never able to figure out just what it was meant to be.  until now.

molly’s tutorial was great, as usual.  the only change i made to her pattern was to lengthen the handles, as i wanted to be able to carry this over my shoulder as well as in the hand.  i made each handle 6.5″ longer than called for, so the finished length of each is 25.5″ (measuring only the portion that sits above the top edge of the bag – this will make sense when you look at that step in the purl bee tutorial, i promise).  so, if you want a shoulder bag, you’ll want to add 13″ to the required length of bias-tape (which, incidentally, is not cut on the bias for this application).

i now have a practical, sturdy, stashable and fetching tote that makes me happy.  what more could you wish for in a bag?

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