a smaller tote

Well, not smaller than the Big Ben tote or the cupcake tote, but smaller than the larger totes I've been making in this style (like Heidi's bag and Tia's bag). Megan emailed me and asked if I could make her a vinyl-bottomed tote, but she didn't really need it to be as gigantic as the ones I've been making. Sometimes it doesn't occur to me that people might not want to put everything they own in their bag and carry it around with them all day. So here's what I came up with:



I played with sizing a little bit until I found the fabric-to-vinyl ratio I liked on the larger totes.



This one still holds a fair amount of stuff - you could easily fit a paperback book on top of your wallet, keys, phone, etc. Megan emailed me a few days ago to make sure I'd put a pocket in for her train pass and her cell phone. I also have cell phone stuck in the bottom of the bag issues, so of course I complied.



My sewing machine decided it didn't want to sew the straps for this one. I'm not quite sure why - I didn't do anything differently for these straps than I did for the straps on Big Ben. I ended up having to throw one strap out and start over again, after I broke three needles on it and snapped the thread three or four times. I also bled on it a little bit after stabbing my finger. I figured Megan wouldn't appreciate that so much. It all worked out in the end though.

And one more picture, because I'm happy with how the pictures turned out: