Cosmo Bag

I purchased Amy Butler's Style Stitches book a few months ago, and had all intentions of participating in Bree from My Crafty Crap's sew along she is hosting using the book to create one project per month.  Now seeing that it is April, and the Cosmo bag is technically January's bag in the sew along, I'm not quite following along.  I knew right away when looking through this book, that of all the bags out of this book, this was one that I just had to make.  I have to say right off the bat, that I LOVE it.  Love Love Love.

I used City Blooms by Kitty Yoshida for the main exterior, Riley Blake purple bead chain for the handles and Riley Blake Victoria in fuscia for the lining.

This bag is the first pattern in the Style Stitches book, and is labeled "beginner."  Now, I really didn't have a hard time putting this bag together, but I don't think I could have just opened up this book, not having had much sewing experience under my belt, and had a successful outcome.  This bag was incredibly labor intensive, and I grossly underestimated how long it would take to put together.  I clocked it, 3 hours alone just to cut out the fabric pieces from the pattern and apply all the 90 million yards of interfacing to all the pieces.  And then I began sewing. 

I hit one major hiccup during the construction...it was 100% my fault and an error in attention to direction, but when I was assembling the outer portion, I sewed the handles on backwards (I sewed the right handle onto the left side of the bag, and the left handle onto the right side of the bag).  Ugh.  I didn't realize it until I went to sew the sides on, and thought, "huh, this doesn't seem right."  Well, that's because it wasn't right.  Like I said completely 100% my fault, but frustrating none the less.  Me and my seam ripper became best friends working on this bag.  

I will say, this bag is monstrous.  Like you could fit a small child inside.  Actually, not even technically a small child.  I do love it, don't get me wrong, this will make a great beach bag, and I plan on using it as a gym bag as well, but it's big.

I love this button detail, and am going to keep it in mind if I ever need a closure like this.

To briefly review this pattern, the construction is very labor intensive for a "beginner" pattern, with lots of curved seems, resulting in TONS of pinning.  As seems to be true with Amy Butler patterns in general, do not expect lots of pictures in the instructions.  I think this pattern had about 14 steps, and while the book has plenty of pictures of the completed bags scattered throughout, there are no pictures of the construction process.  There were 2 maybe 3 diagrams scattered throughout the instructions, but the directions are very clear, concise and worded so there were not may steps where I found myself confused.  Overall, I would say this bag was totally worth the effort!

I am going to link this post to Canoe Ridge Creations Sew Modern Monday, be sure to check out all the awesome entries!