Round Place Mat Bag

Where has the time gone? It's December! 

It has been a good 4 months here in France. At my patchwork club we worked on several projects. The one you are about to read about has been my favorite this year. One of the ladies started with a picture of a purse she liked in a store window or catalog. 

We could all make this, she thought. 

She thought right. 

The bag is basically two round plastic like woven place mats for the table. The leather handles are a bit problematic but there was a work around for it which made a bag just as nice.

The seam allowance throughout was 1 cm. Each place mat is lined with a light weight interfacing backed round cut of fabric. The interfacing is cut scant to the round size of the place mat and is ironed onto the wrong side of a square of fabric which is at least 1/2 inch (1 cm) larger than the the place mat. The square of fabric is then cut round with a 1/2 inch seam allowance.  The fabric is then folded in at the interfacing to the interfacing side of the fabric. It is placed on the wrong side of the place mat and is clipped in place.

Here you can see the inside of my bag. I added a pocket to the center of one side of the inside of the bag. You can't see it in the picture, but across the top of the doily where the button is there is a strip of ribbon sewn so that the top of the pocket will not sag or stretch.
Critical measurements for the bag are from my notes:

Handles for us were the heavy webbing you can buy for bags. I only had a thinner cotton web in my stash so I backed the web with the same fabric used on the bag side to strengthen it. I backed the fabric with interfacing and cut it wide enough so that it had a seam allowance that folded so that the fabric just peeked underneath the cotton web.

What is critical no matter the size, the handle placement is 15 cm apart. I had to take into account the pocket so that it was straight up on the inside of the bag. 

The ~80 cm finished handle includes the length needed for the ends in the seam allowance of the body of the bag between the place mat and the lining fabric. Just a word of advice (how do I know this?), make sure that the end of the outside of the handles fall inside the edge seam. Also important is that the handles be straight up at an angle to the curve as the drawing shows. 

Sew the lining to the place mat and handles. An edge foot makes this really easy.

The second measurement that is important is the 10 cm down from the other side of the handle on both sides. Mark those places with a pin. With a ruler, measure around the bottom of the place mat from one pin to the other. 

The place mats come in different sizes so the side band measurement was different for everyone.

Mine measured 82-1/2 cm just as a reference. Add seam allowance to both ends so it was 84-1/2 cm for me. Cut two 12 cm wide strips to that length. I had to piece mine as the fabric was directional.

Line the strips with interfacing, place them right sides together and sew all the way around the edge leaving open, somewhere in the middle, a 10 cm opening. Trim the corners and turn right side out. Press making sure that the 10 cm opening is neatly pressed in.

Clamp the side fabric to one of the place mat starting at the pin ending at the other pin. Sew starting at one pin ending at the other. Back stitch at both ends. Sew the other place mat to the other side of the side fabric. Its a good idea to check and make sure that the handles line up before sewing this part.

Add a snap at the top center and you are done. 

So what did ours look like? Here are some examples of what our group made:

And this is what mine looked like:

Not as fancy as some of the others but I like it and it was fun and fast to make.