Sew as you go...

That was more or less what I did with this bag.  I had no pattern, just a picture in my head of what I wanted.

Last summer I was lucky enough to come across a fantastic ribbon from the 70s. Since then I have been looking for a project and last week I decided to use it for a bag.

My original plan was to make more cartoon wallets, but as always when I’m in the “should have done” mode my imagination takes a detour.

All my bags need to have a zippered inner pocket; I also prefer to close it with a zipper, have contrasting colors and for it not to be too large. (I see no reason to carry around more than necessary.) 

With that as my starting point I began looking through my fabric collection. How many times I had to cut a little here and pull up a little seam there until I finally got the shape and size I wanted I dont know. Sadly I was not able to have the zipper closure that I wanted. The solutions I tried made the ribbon around crumble so I decided to go for a magnetic button instead. I have since then, of course, managed to figure out how it should have been done, but at that time I was tired of the whole project and decided to leave it as it is. I should also have used a stiffer interfacing to avoid the bag falling over at the magnetic closure. But all in all not too bad for my first attempt with no pattern or other instructions.