Your first sewing project: how to make a tote bag (beginner sewing tutorial)

Summary

My friend is learning to sew and I'm answering all of her questions via the power of educational video. Today's question: what should my first project be? My answer is a tote bag — fun, not terrible, and genuinely simple. It's a few straight stitches and a couple of cuts, and I walk you through every single one.

You'll also learn the two things that actually make beginner projects look good: pressing everything obsessively, and drawing your seam allowance lines before you go near the machine.

• Cutting list for a 10" x 10" bag: one piece 11" wide x 23" long, plus two strap pieces 3" wide x 26" long.
• To resize: width = finished size + 1", length = (finished size x 2) + 3".
• Iron first. Nobody likes it. It's the most important step in the whole project.
• Needle down, foot up — that's how you pivot at every corner. Say it with me.
• Back stitch at the start and end of every single row. Every one.
• Pull the pins before you sew over them so you don't lose an eye. I'm serious about this.
• Straps go on facing downward, 2" from the top, then flip up and secure with a flag stitch — a square with an X inside it.
• Use the free arm (pop off the extension box) so you don't accidentally stitch the bag shut.

Transcript

Hi. Hello. My friend is learning to sew and I'm answering all of their questions through the power of educational videos. The question of the day is, "What first project should I do?" And I have an answer that is fun, not terrible, and pretty simple. Today, we're going to make a tote bag. This is a super simple project. It's just a few straight stitches, a couple cuts. You can do this. You can do anything and I'm going to walk you through it. Okay, get ready. Here we go.

To make this project, you will need a piece of fabric cut into three pieces. One piece should be 11 in wide and 23 in long. And then you'll need two pieces that are 3 in wide and 26 in long. This will make a bag that is 10 in by 10 in. If you want a bigger bag, say 13 in by 13 in, you will do 13 + 1 in for the width and 13 * 2 + 3 in for the length. This will make sense as we go. Your first step is to grab your fabric and iron out all of the wrinkles as seen here. It takes a little bit. Nobody likes doing it, but is the most important first step in your project.

Once you've smoothed out all the wrinkles, you're going to take it over to your cutting table or the floor. In my case, I'm starting with a couple pieces of scrap fabric. Yours might be in one piece, but what you're going to do is on the ugly side or the back side of your fabric, you are going to draw out your shape. Right now, I am drawing a line that is 11 in over. And then I will draw another line that is 23 in long. And then I will connect all of those lines to make sure everything is nice and straight. The angle of this video makes it hard to believe that I'm actually drawing straight lines, but I am. I promise. Once you get everything all drawn out, you will cut that piece out. And once that piece is cut out, you'll move over to your straps and you'll start cutting those. You'll take 3 in wide and 26 in long and then you'll duplicate it. Here you'll see me cutting it folded, cutting over 3 in and then cutting the full length of 26 in. Whenever I finish cutting that out, I'll be able to cut right down the middle and have two even strips. You might also notice that I'm doing a lot of dots as I go. That's to help create these little guidelines for me so that I keep things straight. So now you see I'm about to snip it right down the center using the grooves between the wood on my floor to hold it straight. Perfect. Amazing.

I also had these guys pinned into place. And now I am folding them in half hot dog style and pinning them together with the cute sides kissing and the plain sides out. I have also pinned into place the square that will become the tote bag. The cute sides are kissing, the ugly sides are out, and all the corners are held into place. Now, we'll move over to, you guessed it, the ironing board.

Okay. So, what we're going to do over here is we're going to press our folds into place and make sure we get rid of all the wrinkles. If you are like me and you used heat erasable pens right now, you're panicking because your lines are disappearing. So, you might want to go ahead and press the tops over where you had those lines. Working toward the ugly sides, you will first fold over a half inch, press that into place, and then fold over an inch and press that into place, measuring to make sure it stays even as you go. Then you'll flip it over and do the same thing. a half inch press and then a full inch press and then probably press it again for good measure. Throw some pins in to hold it in place. From there, you are going to draw your uh seam allowance lines. Mine are going to be a half inch, and that's what I gave you in these measurements. So, I'm drawing little dots and lines that are all a half inch from the edge. And that tells me exactly where my needle needs to go once we make it to the machine. I'm also drawing a line right at the very bottom there. Even though it's a fold, we're going to sew it anyway because it doesn't hurt for it to be reinforced. Then we move on to the straps. We make sure they're folded right in the center and we press them flat, no wrinkles, and we get that crease very visible in there. That will help us as we sew. We're also marking a half inch from the edge, the whole way down the long side, and on one of the short sides.

Then we head over to the sewing machine and it's time to get started. For this, you will use a standard straight stitch, just a middle of the road guy. You'll probably want your tension at around three. You'll drop your needle. You'll do a quick back stitch because we always start and end a row of stitches. Repeat it with me now with a back stitch. Once you start going, you will take your time and follow the line all the way down to the corner. When you get to the corner, you're going to stop and with your needle down, you are going to raise your presser foot and turn the bag so that you will be able to just keep sewing straight. From here, you see me just slightly adjusting. I wanted one more stitch to get it a little bit closer to the bottom. And now we're off to the races. And we'll zoop down this side. Once you reach that next corner, you're going to lift your presser foot, spin it around, drop it back down, and follow the line all the way back around to the top of your bag. When you get to that portion at the top that's folded over, your machine might try to unfold it. So, as you're getting closer, just guide it and make sure everything stays nice and flat there. And then you'll finish with a back stitch. Boop, boop, boop. And there you go.

Then you're going to cut those threads off. I got a built-in thread cutter. You might not. You might need snips. You're going to lay it down. You're going to feel very accomplished. And you're going to immediately pick up your first strap. You'll bring that over to your machine and take out pins before you run them over. The last thing you want is to lose an eye because you ran over a pin and your needle broke and then it shot into your eye. Just like with the other, you're going to start with the back stitch and then you're going to go forward on the short side. Lift up the foot with the needle down and then zoop zoop down the long side. Again, moving those pins as you go because the last thing you want is to have only one eye. When you finish making your way down the first strap, thread cutters and then onto the second strap. Back stitch short side. Lift the foot. Put the foot down and down the long side. As long as you do this with the needle in the down position, you can turn it anytime you need. Needle down, footer up. Don't forget. And then don't forget to put the foot back down.

Okay, now comes the hard part. The next thing you want to do is turn those inside out straps right side out. There's a million methods you can use that don't require a special tool, including putting a safety pin in there and using that to pull it back the right way. I'm using a loop turner. It's supposed to make the whole thing super easy and fast by attaching to a little bit of the inside edge and then pulling it down through the inside. This is sped up 10 times. I was struggling with it today. I don't know why. Usually, it's so much quicker, but I left the full uncut thing in here just to let you see that no matter how many times you make things, sometimes they're just a little pain in the ass to get to work out, right? But eventually, you will get it and they will be turned the right way and you will feel super duper accomplished. And you should. I'm proud of you cuz you did it.

But now we're going back to the ironing board. That's right. because we are going to press open our seams and we are going to press open our seams some more in fact. So, the first thing I'm doing is using the side seam. I'm opening those two little scrap edges, the uh excess fabric, and I'm just kind of down the center with the iron, opening them up a bit. And then I'm trying to get one tail to face one side and the other tail to face the other side to reduce bulk. If I had not already folded over the edges for the top, these would be nicely hidden beneath it and you would never see them when the tote bag was finished. But alas, you're going to do the same thing with the straps. You're going to open up those seams the best you can. And then you might decide, no, I really want those seams to line up on the edges, not in the center. So you'll go back and do a little more pressing. The flatter the better. Use steam. Do not be afraid of steam. Steam is your friend. Okay, let's speed it up a bit so we can mosey on to the next step right after this.

All right, we've made it to the next step. So now what we're going to do is figure out our strap placement. I am measuring the bag for its total width and drawing a dot dead center because I made this actually 10 in wide. 5 in is my center point. From there, I'm going to figure out how far down I want the straps. 2 in is the answer. So, I'm going to measure down from the top. 2 in. And because I know I'm putting two straps on here, I'm going to draw a line all the way across to just help me keep it straight. It's a heat erasable pen. It's fine. It's going to go away after this. I know that each of my straps is 1 in wide and I want them to be centered in the space we have. So if you have 10 in all the way across on your bag, then you're going to put your straps between inches 2 and three and inches seven and eight. So I'm marking those 2 in from the top and those will be in the same place on both sides.

Then you're going to take your strap and instead of hanging it upward, you're hanging it downward. and you're going to pin it into place right there. And then you'll do the same thing on the other side, pinning it into place facing the wrong direction. Then you are going to pick it up by the handles and make sure that the handles are even. And if they're not, you're going to readjust. Once your handles are good, you're going to head back over to your sewing machine, pop off the little extension box, and use that free arm to slide your bag into it. This will prevent you from stitching directly through your bag and preventing it from opening. You are going to get lined up right at the edge of where that cuff is. A little trick that I do is Nope, not that pen, Sammy. This pen. Okay. So, using the heat erasable pen, I'm just drawing a line right on the edge of where that cuff is to make sure that I keep my stitch on all the layers and I don't miss part of it as I go. And then because that line is on the edge on the outside of the layers, I know that when I sew, it should be inside that. So you start with a back stitch and then it's just all the way around until you finish your circle and then dip a little back stitch to end it. And then you have these nice straight lines on the inside that match your nice straight lines on the outside. This is a terrible demonstration. I'm so sorry. You see the pen? It's heat erasable. It'll go away.

Now, it's time to work on the straps. But first, got to adjust the music. Okay, here we go. You're going to use those guidelines you drew earlier and the pin that's holding everything in place. You'll start in the center of the strap. You'll do a couple back stitches and then you will sew forward until just past the end of that little strap. And then, you guessed it, you're going to do a back stitch. Raise your foot, pull it off, trim the threads, and then repeat that for the next three. Make sure you're keeping all the extra fabric out of the way so nothing gets stitched to itself. And then go find the scissors you lost and snip all of those loose threads that are hanging out, just waiting to get tangled up.

Once you get rid of all of those guys, you are going to flip your straps up the right way. Press them kind of flat just with your hands. You don't even have to pull out the iron for this. And then you're going to pin them into place so they don't move around during this next step. The next step, by the way, is doing a flag stitch. It sounds scary. It's not scary. You're literally sewing a square and then you're sewing an X in the middle of it. And you're going to do that for all four of these. It's the exact same method that you did for the perimeter of the bag. You'll go down a little bit. Make sure that the needle is down. Lift the foot. Spin the bag 90°. Do the little zoop right there. Make sure the needle is down, the foot is up, and then down the third side. Needle down, foot up, zoop down the fourth side. And then maybe do a little back stitch. Dot dot dot. Then you are going to get the corner and kind of line it up and then do a straight stitch. That ends up being a diagonal stitch. Then you go back just a little bit and then up the next corner. You'll see that I'm using the little ruler to make sure that I'm eyeballing it correctly and keeping everything straight the way I want it to be. You repeat that process for the next three corners. A square with an X in the middle. Back stitching at the start and end of each one.

Then you snip your threads. You feel like you're just about complete and you go back to the ironing board. Once you're there, you just take a final pass, smoothing out anything wrinkly, getting rid of those heat erasable lines, and making it photo ready. Because guess what, baby? You did it. Look at that bag. You made it all by yourself. I am so proud of you. Congratulations. Let me know what you want to make together next. Thanks for wasting your time with me. Waste more time by liking and subscribing and watching another video.