I have now made three versions of the Companion Carpet Bag using the 8inch frame, this will be the fourth and possibly last, at least for a while!

Now that we are in the throes of Winter weather, cold, wet, and windy I decided that I needed a more ‘neutral’ handbag.

For this version I used some furnishing weight linen that was gifted to me together with some faux snakeskin vinyl that I bought back in August from Thimbles Fabrics and Crafts at the Festival of Quilts held at Birmingham National Exhibition Centre. For the lining I raided my stash of fat quarters from New Threads Quilt Shop and the zip for the internal pocket came from the stash that was supplied by my father from when he was an Engineer at Optilon zip factory. The fabrics were stabilised with heavyweight fusible interfacing plus Bosal ® foam wadding.

As I have made the bag before, the construction was pretty straightforward. Unfortunately I did not have sufficient of the Grey colourway of linen but was able to use some co-ordinating print linen for the bag frame channel. Some wrestling of the fabric was involved as I turned the bag right side out as all that stabilising, wadding and faux snakeskin made the outer very substantial.

I had found the fabulous plastic and nickel finish bag handles in my bag-making stash and attached them to the bag with rivetted tabs of faux snakeskin. I particularly like this method and it will be appearing on future bag makes. I attached a flap closure using two pieces of faux snakeskin with a concealed magnetic snap.

The finishing touches were pretty little tassels on the zip pull of the internal pocket and a faux leather ‘handmade’ label attached to the plain outer side of the bag.

I am just so pleased and proud of this bag that it makes me smile every time I use it.

18^th December 2019