This video is sponsored in part by Bernina.
Welcome to Make Thrift Buy, a show where
I try and recreate items from the internet
for a fraction of the cost.
The inspiration for today's episode
is this bag from Lazy Oaf, which is a cute little
purse style shoulder bag with a
a clasp closure, tassels
and a long chain for the strap.
Unfortunately Lazy Oaf has a "we avoid" rating
on Good On You, a website that helps one find
clothing brands that don't exploit
humans, animals or the environment.
So, bow bow, Lazy Oaf.
But it does make it a good candidate
to recreate for ourselves.
Now I'm not gonna be trying to recreate this bag exactly,
instead I'm gonna be putting my own spin on it.
But I am going to borrow
a lot of elements from the Lazy Oaf bag.
So let's get started.
First, let's talk materials.
So I want this fabric to be the outside of my bag.
I fell in love with this made in Japan fabric
when I was shopping for my fabric boxes for the last video
and so I came back to Yuzawaya
and I got 20 inches of this fabric for the bag.
Next the lining.
This was an end of the roll remnant
so it was super discounted.
It's a lightweight cotton and I also
got 20 inches of this fabric.
This purse frame was something I found at Yuzawaya as well,
which I'll be using for the closure for the top of the bag.
This chain for the bag strap has
a length of 47 inches or 120 centimeters.
I also got so craft glue.
I have got this pointy thingy.
Google tells me it's called a tailor's awl, awl, awl?
I don't know how to pronounce that.
It'll come in useful later on
but, a cheap wooden skewer would work just as well.
And finally, I've got some tassel trim.
I got 20 inches of each trim.
One's sparkly and one that made me think of unicorn colors.
And 20 inches of both was more then enough to make two bags.
You can see why I love Japanese craft stores so much.
They had literally the exact things
I needed to make this bag, but if you're not blessed
with a nearby Yuzawaya, like I am,
these things are available from sites like Etsy and Ebay.
To find something like my bag closure
use the terms purse frame or bag hardware
and it'll take you in the right direction.
Alright, so first thing I did was
to open up the purse frame.
It has a paper pattern inside it
so that I can cut my fabric to the right size for the frame.
This pattern is a quarter of the full pattern
and it's intended to be either copied to it's full size
or placed along two folded sides of fabric.
Because I want to add tassels to the bottom of the bag
I want to cut out two parts of this pattern
from my main fabric.
So I folded my main outer fabric in half
and I placed this edge on the fold, then cut it out.
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I repeated this and now I have this.
This piece will be the front of the bag
and this will be the back.
Because the fabric is two-sided
I decided that I would put the white with black flowers
on one side and the black with white flowers on the other.
I thought it'd make it interesting
to have a bag that's different
depending on which side is showing.
To attach the tassels, first I lined
the pastel trim up with this straight bottom edge here
and I cut them to the same size
as the bottom edge of the bag.
Then I flipped the tassel trim up like this.
Right sides together with the outer bag piece,
clipped it into place and sewed it down
onto the fabric just using a normal straight stitch.
Once that was sewn on I laid the sparkly silver trim
on top, cut it to the same size
and sewed it on like the other one.
You can see that I sewed it on
but it looks like it's upside down
because when the bag is all sewed up and finished
it'll be flipped down like this.
Trust me, this makes sense.
For now I flipped it back up
and let's move on to the lining.
Now, because I'm not adding tassels to the lining piece
it can be cut out according to the bag's pattern.
To cut that out I folded the lining
in half once then twice, so there's
four layers of fabric in total
and then I placed the paper pattern
so that these dotted edges are aligned
along the two folded edges of the fabric.
Then I cut around this and unfolded it looks like this.
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I then fold the lining piece right sides together like this.
Clipped it in place around the edges.
And sewed it together like this.
Which gave me a pouch with open square corners.
The corners are gonna be sewed separately
to create shape in the purse.
So I flipped the lining around so that
one of the open corners looked like this
and then I sewed this corner
in place with a straight stitch.
I repeated that on the other side
and that gave me this pouch.
So we're putting the lining pouch aside for the moment.
I moved back to the main fabric for the bag.
So we've got one side that has
tassel trim attached to the bottom
and the other side of the bag which doesn't.
I placed these two pieces right sides together
matching up their edges and corners
and then I clipped them together
along the bottom edge first.
I sewed along the bottom edge using a straight stitch
to attach the two pieces.
Now we have a fabric piece that looks
just like that main pattern and lining from the beginning.
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I trimmed the seam allowance smaller
as there was a lot of fabric laying in this seam now.
Then I moved the tassels out of the way
pushing them into the center of the bag
so that I don't sew over them in the next steps.
With the pieces folded right sides together
I clipped around the edges this time
and then I sewed them together much like the lining
down these two straight sides here.
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I then flipped it to it's side
while holding the open corner.
Making sure to push the tassels down
out of the way while I did so.
(upbeat music)
And then I sewed the corners of the bag together like this.
And just a note here, I didn't bother
to press open the seam with an iron before sewing it,
because I felt that it didn't really matter
but you can of course do this if you want to.
I then repeated this on the other side for the other corner.
(upbeat music)
With the bag all sewn up, I turned it
right ways out, taking care to push out the corners.
And here's the two-sided outer
of the purse with it's tassels attached
ready to have the lining put in.
At this point I remembered that I wanted
to add a pocket into the lining,
which should have been done back at this step.
But, I really like to have pockets in my bags
so I decided, even though it was a bit late,
I would still add one by just carefully
sewing it into place here.
To make the pocket I cut out two
identical rectangles of size five by four inches.
I placed the right sides together
and then I sewed all the way around the edges
with a seam allowance at three eighths of an inch
leaving a small gap of two inches.
When that was done I cut the corners
of the seam allowance then I turned this
right sides out through the gap,
taking care to poke those corners out
and I pressed it with an iron.
Then I sewed the gap closed like this.
Now if I had done this properly
I would have then attached the pocket here
before sewing up the lining.
But because I didn't do that, I placed
the pocket into the lining here,
pinned it in place and sewed it really,
really carefully into place.
Making sure not to sew through
the other side of the lining at the same time.
I did it and now we have a pocket.
Back to the bag construction.
With the lining inside out and the main fabric bag
the right way around, I placed the lining bag
inside the main fabric bag like this,
matching up the side seams and the top edges.
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Then I clipped the two together around the top raw edges
(upbeat music)
and I sewed all the way around the top edge.
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Okay, now we've got this.
It's time to place it into the purse hardware.
So, I opened up the purse frame
and I'm going to attach it one side at a time.
With my craft glue I coated the inside
of one side of the frame with glue.
The nozzle on my craft glue bottle
is really good for this because it makes it easy
to get the glue in there, but you could also use
a brush or a skewer if you don't have
a glue with a nozzle like this.
Once I had carefully coated the inside
of the front of the frame I left it for about one minute
so the glue would become a bit more tacky.
Then I started pushing the front raw edge
of the bag inside the frame.
This is a fiddly process.
I'm not gonna lie, I was really, really careful
not to accidentally yank the fabric out
'cause then I'd have to start again.
Once it was placed inside and somewhat held by the glue
I flipped it around so that the lining was facing me.
I used this pointy tailor's awl
to push any fabric on the lining side
that was still hanging out inside the frame.
Then I got my glue and I carefully
put a little bit more along the inside
on the side of the lining fabric.
Now, the purse frame kit that I got came with this stuff.
It's thick paper that's been rolled
into a flexible tube almost like string
but it's made of paper.
I don't know what it's called
'cause I don't speak Japanese
and I'm not sure if all purse frame kits
would come with this, so I wanted to show it in detail.
What it does is it helps add some bulk
into the top of the frame which helps
keep the fabric in place because the fabric
for the bag is thinner then the width of the frame.
Basically stops it from falling out.
So using the tailor's awl I carefully
pushed this papery stuff into the purse frame
on the lining side all the way around the frame.
And then I clipped it to the same length as the frame.
Once that was done I let it dry
for a couple of hours before repeating
these same steps on the back of the bag
and the other side of the purse frame.
(upbeat music)
I then let the whole thing dry for a full 24 hours
just to be safe and then I attached the chain strap
to the two holes on the purse frame.
And with that I was done so, how did I go?
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I love my new purse.
I've been using it pretty much
every day for the past week since I made it.
And it's been holding up very well.
Ever since I saw this fabric in Yuzawaya
I was determined to use it for something
and I still have all of this left over.
So, I think I'm gonna try and make myself
a reversible tote bag as well.
So although I didn't try and copy the Lazy Oaf bag entirely
I think that a bag of this style
certainly doesn't need to be bought.
Especially not from an expensive store with a...
Especially not from an expensive store
with a we avoid rating.
And it can easily be made by yourself.
This project is actually really good for beginners.
If you're either new to sewing or bag making
it is a project that won't bamboozle you
by getting to flip the bag outside
through the gap in the lining like most bag projects do.
It's also a super quick project,
excluding the drying time, this probably
like the hands-on part took me about 90 minutes to do.
So, it would be an ideal item to give as a gift
or to sell at markets or on Etsy or things like that.
Because you spend a relatively low amount of time
and materials on it but, the end product looks very profess.
This video is sponsored by this beautiful machine here
the Bernina's B 335.
So in my last video I talked at length
about the amazing features of this machine.
This video I'm actually gonna show them to you.
Oh, I'm sorry Bernina.
I got too excited.
Firstly, this machine is super easy to thread,
especially with the help of a self-threading needle
at the last step there.
Without speeding the footage up
this is how quick it takes me to thread it.
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It also runs super smoothly.
Here I'm sewing a satin lining material
and it just feeds through so easily.
Even a finicky fabric like this
feels like pure simple cotton on this machine.
It is also really quiet.
I have no worries about using it past midnight
even though I share walls with my neighbors
because it is so super quiet
compared to other machines I've used.
It has an inbuilt alphabet function
so I can attach little handmade tags
to the things that I make saying my name
and the year it was made.
I started doing this on clothing items
that I'm really proud of.
I think it'd be really cool if someone
found this in a thrift store one day
and they can be like hey, this is the name
of the person who made this and the year.
I also put them on presents that I make for people
to give them that extra special personalized touch.
The B 335 also have over 100 decorative stitches
which helps add an individual flare
to projects and fabrics.
I used some of the stitches to decorate
the front of this top that I made and wore
for the advertisement I did with Bernina.
It's also got this really great sewing table attachment.
It adds a lot of room to my workspace here while I'm sewing.
While it's also compact enough
that it isn't taking up a lot of space
and being an eyesore in this tiny
Japanese apartment we're currently living in.
And here's a super gnarly feature that I love.
When the bobbin runs out, if I have a project
currently going on top of the machine
I don't have to pull the project off
to change the bobbin like a lot of top loading bobbins
and I don't have to move the table either.
The project can stay in place
while I open up the bobbin case
and look at the bobbin from through here,
wind it, which is really quick on this machine,
and then put it back in ready to go.
It's also just the most reliable
sewing machine I've ever used.
Granted I've only been using it for about six months now
but I have not yet had any problems with it
and what I know of Bernina's is that
they're used in schools, they're used in hospitals.
They are built to be sturdy and to last
but also run really smoothly.
If you want to see the video advertisement
I made for Bernina, I'll pop the link down below.
And thank you to everyone who has been sending me
photos of posters of my face at the Bernina stores
or photos they see of me in magazines.
It's been a super absurd and really,
really cool experience working with Bernina.
My mom is making the Bernina Australia people
send her like a life-size poster of my face.
I am not quite sure what she's gonna do with it.
I think that she thinks I'm super famous now.
It's really sweet though.
Thank you so much to Bernina for sponsoring this video.
Thank you all so much for watching.
Stay crafty and I'll see you all in my next video.
Bye for now.
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the superhuman producers and the small brands
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