San Francisco in Blue

Made for *ArtisanCraft’s Bring Out the Trash contest.

Front and Back Views

When I read about the contest, I thought ‘I have a ton of scraps and leftover bits from projects. I’m sure I’ll think of something.’ But the contest specified it was looking for functional pieces; something that serves a new purpose. A wall hanging quilt is decorative sure, but not functional.

I was stumped. I had an idea for a wall hanging that I’ve wanted to try that I figured I could audition with scraps. But how to make a wall hanging functional?

You make it into a tote bag.

The idea for the design on the bag came from late night channel flipping. I was flipping through TV channels several months ago when I happened upon one of those Time Life Music infomercials. One of the songs on the CD set was San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair) [link]) and the lyrics

“If you're going to San Francisco
Be sure to wear some flowers in your hair”

put an image in my head. I went through deviantART’s stock photos and found one that more or less matched the image in my head... =archetype-stock’s Romance Heroine VI [link] . I used Roxio’s PhotoSuite on the stock photo as a starting point for my appliqué templates. I made my template, saved the file, and planned on coming back to the idea at some point.

Anyway, when I read about the contest I figured I could see if my idea would work by using some of my scraps. Since I had a lot of scraps from the Something Blue pieces I did, I decided to do the piece in all blue. (My original plan for the piece was to use fabrics that were closer to real life colorings.)

I printed out my template, traced the pieces onto the Steam-A-Seam 2 scraps, cut the fabrics out, fused them into place on a piece of solid cotton fabric. More Steam-A-Seam 2 was used on the back of the solid fabric, and then the fabric was cut to shape. The appliqué piece was then fused to the denim. After fusing, I used a zigzag stitch around the raw edges. Once the appliqué was fused & stitched, I hand stitched with invisible thread individual flowers from the lace trim and small ribbon roses to the figure’s hair.

The denim had been cut from the jeans such that the front pocket had been saved and incorporated into the back of the bag. The side seam of the jeans was also saved to be the one side seam of the tote. The strap was cut out the leg. Two pieces were sewn together and folded in the same manner as quilt binding. When I sewed the two pieces together to get the desired length, I did it on a 45 degree angle. Instead of trimming the seam to a quarter inch as one does with binding, I ironed the seam open and left the extra fabric there. The result is that the top of the strap is slightly padded.

The undershirt was cut to the same size as the denim. The denim and undershirt pieces were sewn together at the top of the bag, with the strap caught in the seam. Then the bottom of the denim was sewn together and then the long side seam (bottom of the denim to the bottom of the undershirt). The bag was turned right side out, the bottom of the undershirt was stitched closed, and the upper edge of the bag was topstitched.

A full view of the bag can be seen in my scraps. [link]
A close-up of the design can also be seen in my scraps. [link]


The ‘San Francisco in Blue’ tote bag measures about 10.5 inches by 16 inches. Strap is about 32 inches long overall.

Materials used:
A pair of jeans that were beyond wearing due to stains and tears.
A men’s undershirt destined for the rag pile.
Scraps of a cotton solid fabric and some print fabrics left over from [link] and [link]
Scrap of flannel backed satin left over from a pair of sleep pants.
Scraps of Steam-A-Seam 2 left over from other projects
Thread from stash; previously used spools (“White” All Purpose, Invisible and “Blue Clouds” Machine Quilting Thread)

‘Lace’ Trim – purchased for this project
Small Ribbon Roses – purchased for this project