Mothering Sunday Make - The Garden Tidy Tote Tutorial

I know that this may be freaking out my readers in the Americas but here in the UK, Mothering Sunday is next week, the third Sunday in Lent so I thought it might be nice to make something that does not confine your mum to the kitchen.  My mother had very green thumbs and loved to be out in the garden and when I moved to my house it was my mum who cleared the borders and collected copious bags of snails to boot!


So I thought a great gift would be a gardening tidy tote to carry round all those bits and pieces that you need to be with you when you are wrestling with mother nature.

You will need the following

1/2 yard heavyweight cotton fabric
2 metres of bunting tape... you could use webbing but the tape is cheaper!
1.5 metres of 1.5" webbing
Cotton
Cutting mat, rotary cutter and ruler or scissors
Tape measure
Pins
Iron and ironing board


Press your fabric and then cut out the following pieces and remember if you have a directional pattern on your fabric to take it into account... I made sure I had no "Australian flowers" on mine:

• 3 x 12" (width) x 8" (height) - front, back and base
• 3 x 12" (width) x 5" (height) - pockets
• 23 x 8" (width) x 8" (height) - sides

Cut four lengths of bunting tape 5" long, pin it in place on the pocket  piece at 4" and 8", sew it in place on both sides on the pocket piece.

Cut two more pieces of bunting tape 12" long, now fold it in half and iron it.  Pin it to the top of the pocket and sew it into place.


Now lay your pockets on top of the front and back, so that it sits at the bottom of them and sew a 1/4" seam to hold it in place, then sew down the centre of each of the four pieces of bias binding that mark out the pockets.

Pin the bottom of the the front onto the base with right sides facing and repeat this with the back (yes, I know they are both the same) and sew them together using a 5/8" seam allowance, then press the seam towards the centre of the base rather than open.

Now, it is going to get a little more challenging... find the centre of your base and the centre of your side and match them up, pin each side bottom and sew just from the front seam to the back seam, you should have about 5/8" left on each side.


Put to the sides together together pin them and sew down to the base... it will look ugly, but don't worry, we will soon have it looking spick and span.  

We will ease the corner,  you will remember in the last tutorial for the specs case we cut triangles to make it smooth on a curve this time we are going to cut a square from the seam from the side pieces which will allow the box shape to fall into place.  Sew all the other sides up and trim the excess seams with pinking shears then.  Turn the bag inside out.

Press the side seams together and then top stitch them into place.

Take the remainder of your bunting tape, fold it in half and iron then pin around the top of the bag but remember to fold your seams towards the side panels and sew it into place.

And finally attach the handles, cut two lengths of webbing 20" long, fold under 1/4", place one end above the first pocket tape and 1.5" below the top of the bag.  

I use a square starting at the bottom and then sew a diagonal, across the top again and then another diagonal to finish to make sure that my handles are good and strong.

And this is what you should end up with... a rather pleasing tote for the garden and the great thing is when it gets dirty and it will, you can pop it into the washing machine and will come up as fresh as a daisy... but hopefully without the roots!


Well now it's time to go and take a look at Wendy's Handmade Monday... and if you love crafting she has set up a new blog for crafters called Handmade Harbour which is certainly worth a sit down with a coffee for a good read.