Amy Butler's Weekender Bag - Tips, Hints and a bit of a Tutorial

This tutorial has pictures from several of the bags I have made

Okay, here is my post on some hints, tips and construction points for the Weekender bag. I have pictures from the construction of all three of my recent Weekender bags. Throughout this post, I will link some great tutorials I have found on bag construction.  The instructions for this bag are good and I will just add a bit when putting the entire bag together.




 
My first thing is to highly encourage you to buy a piping foot or a single welt cord foot (home dec type foot)  if you don't own one. I think the single welt cord foot has a deeper groove for larger piping. This will make the construction of this bag so much easier.
Here is a picture of my foot

Next, buy the 30" zipper, this is not the easiest thing to find.  I picked out some fabric for my first Weekender Bag and couldn't find a good match for a 30" zipper.  You can usually find these in black, white and cream.  The zipper doesn't show much but a nice match is always helpful.  The material list states a non-separating zipper but I have used a separating zipper and stitched that part together.

Plan on cutting out all the fabric, interfacing and peltex at one time, this will take at least an hour.  Then fuse the interfacing to all pieces. Don't rush the fusing, you want a nice bond.

I fuse interfacing to the exterior fabric:

1. Top panel (I fuse 2 pieces of interfacing to these panels - I like the stiffness for this area since you do not use peltex here)
2. bottom panel
3. End pocket panel
4. main panel
5. large pocket panel

I cut Peltex for:

1. Main Panels
2. Large Pocket Panel
3. Bottom

I also use Peltex in the handles. Here is a great tutorial on making the handles. 

Picture Source - Sew Mama Sew



At this point in the handle construction, I measure the finish handle width, cut the Peltex about 1/8" less and then put the Peltex inside the handle for added stability.


When marking the main panel for the handles, I like to use a yellow chalk marker, this shows up nicely on the panels

The instructions state to sew across the top of the handles where attached to the bag, I like to stitch an "X" for added reinforcement

I use spray adhesive to hold the Peltex to the interfaced fabric pieces.  It is important to baste on your piping through all the layers.  I like to move my needle over one position to cover the stitching for the piping construction.

On my last three bags I did not put the piping on the bottom of the main panel.  Easier to join all the layers in my opinion, Here is the end of the piping

Mark the middle of the top panel and the main panel, pin on top and bottom.  Then pin all the way around, working carefully around the corners.

Now it is time to wrestle the bag to sew all these layers together.  So attach that single welt foot, move the needle to the over (closer to the piping) and start stitching.

Now to the do as I say not as I do part.  I normally stitch this with the basting stich up, you can make sure you are sewing over the previous stitching and getting very close to the piping.

After I get all this stitched, I make sure I have sewn close to the piping.

If you have some places with the seam too far away from the piping, this is the time to correct that.

After all of this, I trim the Peltex away from the  seam allowance



Before attaching the lining into the bag, I like to add purse feet to the bottom of the bag

Purse feet in upper left corner - hard to see on this fabric





I found a fantastic tutorial for this when making my first Sophia Bag, check it out here

Finally, I only put one large pocket panel on my Weekender bags, using the exterior fabric for both sides.

On the other side of Erin's bag, I made a pocket like this one:

I just measured the space between the handles and added the pocket under the handles, stitching the handles and pocket in place.


To recap, here are pictures of the Weekender Bags I have made



The houndstooth is mine and it does have piping on the bottom.

one for a graduation present

one for a friend

Helped my friend on this one

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I hope this helps, please email me if you need any other information or clarification.