Cinched Overnight Tote

I haven't completed too many projects before I started this blog, but I am trying to work in posts about these pre-blog projects here and there. I also want to get the chance to share tutorials that I have found helpful, like this one from Sweet Verbena's blog: It's a Cinch Bag. I found it a bit too big for everyday use, but it made the perfect overnight bag for my Thanksgiving out of town.  If I were to do this again, I would reduce the dimensions by at least 25%. My material cost was $5-6.

Here is my nautical version of the bag.

It was my first bag, maybe 6 projects in, and probably my biggest projects to date. I did the outer layer with a lot precision and I am pretty proud of the stitching I did. Then, it was on to the liner bag with the zipper. Boy, I did I struggle with this! It was the first time I had worked with a zipper and I had accidentally bought a heavy duty one. I managed to get it to work and conceal the imperfections with the zipper work, but there's a lot of ugly hidden in there. ;) I got a lot of basic bag-making techniques from this tutorial.  I hope this helps any beginners out there!