Supplies {Nappy Bag Sew Along}

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Hi everyone,

It's time to start getting prepared for our Nappy bag sew along, which starts on 11th March 2016, have you joined the Facebook group yet?

'Handmade' script label from Emmaline Bags

Here's the list of required supplies you'll need.

Materials needed:
1 1/8yd (1m) Outer fabric
- Quilting cottons are fine for this as they'll be interfaced, although I used a light home decor. You don't want anything too weighty as once you get all of the layers together you'll find it tough to stitch through. Remember that bags of this ilk take an awful lot of a beating. My beautiful pale print fabric is now decidedly grubby! So either choose a fabric which can hide that, or that you've pre-washed to ensure that you will be able to wash the final bag. You can protect your fabric with something like Scotchguard if you'd like to once your bag is fully made up.

1yd (3/4m) Contrast outer fabric
- Quilting cottons are good here too. This is for your handles and straps. Remember these too will receive a fair amount of travel dirt what with them being on the floor of the car, bus, hotel floor, business meeting!

2yd (1 3/4m) Lining fabric
- Quilting cotton, polycotton or lightweight woven fabric.
1 1/8yd (1m) heavy stabiliser
- fusible fleece or foam stabiliser (such as ByAnnie's Soft & Stable or Headliner
You may wish to refer to my post reviewing different foam stabilisers to help you choose the right stabiliser for your bag.
3 1/4yd (3m) medium weight interfacing
- This is to make your bag really sturdy and each quilting cotton outer layer will have both medium interfacing and fusible fleece to give it that stability.
If you're using a foam stabiliser such as Soft & Stable you can probably forego the extra layer of interfacing and stick with just S&S on the outer layers.
You will still need the medium interfacing on the lining pieces.

Detachable cross body strap

Hardware needed:
35 1/2" (90cm) length of piping - Optional
43 1/4" (110cm) length of elastic 1/4" (50mm) wide
1 x 22" (56cm) zip, double or single - Please see below regarding this zip.
2 x 8" (20cm) zips to match lining
1 x magnetic snap
2 x 1" (2.5cm) D rings (or triangular rings if you can get them, they're far superior, but fairly new to me!)
2" (5cm) length of 3/4" (2cm) wide length of hook & loop tape

Both the following can be exchanged for other sizes as long as they match:
1 x 1 1/2" (4cm) triglide buckle
2 x 1 1/2" (4cm) swivel lobster clips

Optional: 6 x 3/8" (10mm) Rivets
Optional keychain/s or dummy clips:
For one: 1 x 19mm (3/4”) swivel hook & 12.5cm (5”) of 19mm (3/4”) grossgrain ribbon
For two: 2 x 19mm (3/4”) swivel hooks & 22cm (9”) of 19mm (3/4”) grossgrain ribbon

For a hardware 'kit' containing the basic hardware (not the optionals) for The Nappy bag, please check out Bobbin Girl if you're in the UK and Europe, and Emmaline Bags if you're in Canada or USA. I'm still investigating an option for those in Australia, sorry for the delay!

Where to start choosing your supplies

A note about the main bag zip
Usually when starting to look for supplies you'd choose your fabric first. In the case of the Nappy bag though, I'd encourage you to start with your zip and build from there. If you want a twin slider for your zip you'll need to find a zip with twin sliders (sometimes known as double sliders or a double zip), or make one yourself. Dee wrote a great tutorial on my blog about how to adapt a single slide zip to a double, but if you're like me and prefer to buy your zips with closed ends, you should start looking for this first.

Then when you have found the zip the right size, you can choose your fabric to co-ordinate. In the Nappy bag, you'll want a zip that's 22" (56cm) long, although one that's slightly too long can be cut down to size. I prefer closed ended zips for this Nappy bag pattern as the extra tension on the zip ends when opening it wide really benefits from the metal zip ends.

Of course you can use a single zip, and the pattern works just as well with a single zip rather than a double. If you've found some absolutely gorgeous fabric you can't live without, but can't find a double zip to match, then maybe a single zip is the best option.