New Laptop Bag

 I haven't made a new purse or bag yet this year, and I've been thinking for awhile about making a purse with a built-in laptop sleeve.  We do lots of zooms at work but my work desktop doesn't have a webcam, so I wind up having to haul my laptop back and forth to work everyday.  I have a laptop bag, but between that and the purse and my lunchbag and my knitting, it seemed like too much.  I like making bags anyway, so maybe I just needed a good excuse.

I really tried to make a different colorway than my usual handmade purses, but I just failed.  I dug out all my home dec fabric and nothing was calling out to me, so I wound up back with purple/teal/black.  I used my very favorite print fabric ever.  It's from Jane Sassaman's Prairie Gothic Line and it's quite an old line but I bought up some in a medium home dec weight when she was destashing last year.

I didn't have a pattern or anything, I just drafter it based on my criteria (which were several).  I wanted a built-in central, zip-close laptop pocket that fully divided the bag so there were two large areas on either side (one for my purse stuff and one for my knitting).  I wanted no external pockets to obscure the fabric pattern but I wanted sufficient big enough inside pockets to hold the laptop accessories.  Finally, I wanted the base to be a sturdier fabric than the rest of it.

This is my chicken scratch design notes, it took a fair amount of thinking to work out the order for everything, and of course making the lining was the hardest part (since that was where all the complications are).

I didn't take very many in-progress pictures but here are a couple:

This is the finished lining, it's interfaced with a sort of lightweight fusible interfacing just because that's what I had.

Here are the external pieces as I was assembling the handles,  they have that foamy automotive headliner fabric (it's the beige in the pic below) as interfacing to help give structure.  In addition to that, I added a layer of peltex in the bottom.

And here I was assembling the last stage.

The bottom is a sturdy black corduroy I think must have come from Georgia.  between the bottom and the print is a thin piping-like layer made from some of Georgia's gorgeous handwoven scraps.  I think it makes a really lovely accent.  The handles are tubular (with plastic tubing inside) and are made of two layers of purple shiny polyester covered with a layer of black swiss dot organza.  On one side, the moth and the thistle are the focal point and on the other side the blue flowers are the focal point.  (Have I mentioned how much I love this print?) 

The whole bag closes with a recessed zipper top, and that fabric is purple with silver printed over it-with adds a bit of sparkle in person.

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It's hard to see in the pictures but the handles have a subtle purple tint because the swiss dot is translucent.  I used leftover leather scraps to make the zipper pull and tab for the outside zipper.

Inside the central built-in divider is the laptop sleeve, it has a zipper pocket on the side of it, and then there are two additional pockets, one on each side of the divider.

The laptop sleeve is lined with crushed polyester velvet, nice and soft.  And I love the blue leather tassel zipper pull on the zipper there;  I got several of those pulls at IQF in Houston a few years ago and that's my last one.

And of course the pockets are all lined with other fun fabrics.

Anyway, it turned out how I envisioned, so that's always a win.  I'm really enjoying it so far!!