Easy No-Sew Tote Bag

I posted about this tote bag last night on my sewing blog, Sandy Sewz, and the more I thought about it, the more I decided this would be a good project to feature here. It's a neat way to jazz up a plain old canvas tote bag and no sewing is required.

I was inspired by this post at the Sisters Stuff blog. Here is how mine turned out:

Here is all you need to do this project:

• Tote Bag
• Fabric (You'll need 2 coordinating fabrics)
• Ribbon
• Flower
• Wonder Under
• Hot Glue Gun

If you are not a sew-er and don't have fabric on hand, go to Jo-Ann, Hancock or Hobby Lobby and buy a couple of fat quarters. They are usually only around $2 a piece and are a small 18 X 21 piece of fabric... that way you don't have to go pick out fabric and wait for it to be cut from the bolt (unless you really want to!).

Since I wasn't planning on doing a tutorial for this, I did not take pictures along the way. But if you follow the link above, they give you step-by-step instructions with photos to show you what to do.

They put their ribbon down the middle of the big piece of fabric and then added rick rack to cover the raw edges where the 2 fabrics meet. Since I did not want to cover up the pretty flowers in my fabric, I chose to use the ribbon to cover the raw edges and skipped the rick rack. It's your design... do whatever makes you happy! 

I did not use the Wonder Under on my ribbon; I just glued it right on and it worked great! In case you are unfamiliar with it, here is what Wonder Under looks like:

It has an adhesive on one side that allows you to iron it on to the reverse side of your fabric. Once it cools, peel off the paper and you can then iron it onto your bag.

This was a really fast, easy project and I love the way it turned out. If you make one, please let me know... I'd love to see a photo of it.